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FAMOUS  AFFINITIES 
OF    HISTORY 

THE  ROMANCE  OF  DEVOTION 

BY 

LYNDON   ORR 

ILLUSTRATED 

POUR  VOLUMES 
VOL.  IV. 


HARPER  y  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 


Copyright,  1909,  1910.  191 1.  1912.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 


FAGB 


Dean  Swift  and  the  Two  Esthers    .       .  3 

Percy  Bysshe  Sheuley  and  Mary  Godwin  23 

The  Story  of  the  Carlyles      ...  43 

The  Story  of  the  Hugos    ....  73 

The  Story  of  George  Sand       ...  95 

The  Mystery  of  Charles  Dickens    .       .  129 

Honors  De  Balzac  and  Evelina  Hanska  149 

Charles  Reade  and  Laura  Seymour  .       .  169 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Jonathan  Swift 

Mary  Godwin 

Jane  BailKe  Welsh  at  the  time  of  her  marriage 
to  Thomas  Carlyle 

Laura  Seymour  as  she  appeared  in  the  character 
of  Juliet 


DEAN  SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO 
ESTHERS 


JONATHAN   SWIFT 


MARY   GODWIN 


JANE   BAILLIE   WELSH 


LAURA    SEYMOUR 


FAMOUS 
AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

DEAN  SWIFT  AND  THE  tWo  ESTHERS 

THE  story  of  Jonathan  Swift  and  of  the  two 
women  who  gave  their  lives  for  love  of 
him  is  familiar  to  every  student  of  English 
literature.  Swift  himself,  both  in  letters  and 
in  politics,  stands  out  a  conspicuous  figure  in 
the  reigns  of  King  William  III  and  Queen 
Anne.  By  writing  Gulliver's  Travels  he 
made  himself  immortal  The  external  facts  of 
his  singular  relations  with  two  charming  women 
are  sufficiently  well  known;  but  a  definite  ex- 
planation of  these  facts  has  never  yet  been 
given.  Swift  held  his  tongue  with  a  repellent 
taciturnity.  No  one  ever  dared  to  question  him. 
Whether  the  true  solution  belongs  to  the  sphere 
of  psychology  or  of  physiology  is  a  question 
that  remains  unanswered. 
But,  as  the  case  is  one  of  the  most  puzzling 

8 


4      FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

in  the  annals  of  love,  it  may  be  well  to  set  forth 
the  circumstances  very  briefly,  to  weigh  the 
theories  that  have  already  been  advanced,  and 
to  suggest  another. 

Jonathan  Swift  was  of  Yorkshire  stock, 
though  he  happened  to  be  bom  in  Dublin,  and 
thus  is  often  spoken  of  as  **the  great  Irish 
satirist,"  or  **the  Irish  dean."  It  was,  in 
truth,  his  fate  to  spend  much  of  his  life  in  Ire- 
land, and  to  die  there,  near  the  cathedral  where 
his  remains  now  rest ;  but  in  truth  he  hated  Ire- 
land and  everything  connected  with  it,  just  as 
he  hated  Scotland  and  everything  that  was  Scot- 
tish.   He  was  an  Englishman  to  the  core. 

High-stomached,  proud,  obstinate,  and  over- 
mastering, independence  was  the  dream  of  his 
life.  He  would  accept  no  favors,  lest  he  should 
put  himself  under  obligation;  and  although  he 
could  give  generously,  and  even  lavishly,  he 
lived  for  the  most  part  a  miser  *s  life,  hoarding 
every  penny  and  halfpenny  that  he  could. 
Whatever  one  may  think  of  him,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  he  was  a  very  manly  man.  Too 
many  of  his  portraits  give  the  impression  of 
a  sour,  supercilious  pedant;  but  the  finest  of 
them  all — that  by  Jervas — shows  him  as  he 
must  have  been  at  his  very  prime,  with  a  face 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS   5 

that  was  almost  handsome,  and  a  look  of  at- 
tractive humor  which  strengthens  rather  than 
lessens  the  power  of  his  brows  and  of  the  large, 
lambent  eyes  beneath  them. 

At  fifteen  he  entered  Trinity  College,  in  Dub- 
lin, where  he  read  widely  but  studied  little,  so 
that  his  degree  was  finally  granted  him  only  as 
a  special  favor.  At  twenty-one  he  first  visited 
England,  and  became  secretary  to  Sir  William 
Temple,  at  Moor  Park.  Temple,  after  a  dis- 
tinguished career  in  diplomacy,  had  retired  to 
his  fine  country  estate  in  Surrey.  He  is  remem- 
bered now  for  several  things — for  having  enter- 
tained Peter  the  Great  of  Russia;  for  having, 
while  young,  won  the  affections  of  Dorothy  Os- 
borne, whose  letters  to  him  are  charming  in  their 
grace  and  archness ;  for  having  been  the  patron 
of  Jonathan  Swift ;  and  for  fathering  the  young 
girl  named  Esther  Johnson,  a  waif,  bom  out  of 
wedlock,  to  whom  Temple  gave  a  place  in  his 
household. 

When  Swift  first  met  her,  Esther  Johnson 
was  only  eight  years  old ;  and  part  of  his  duties 
at  Moor  Park  consisted  in  giving  her  what  was 
then  an  unusual  education  for  a  girl.  She  was, 
however,  still  a  child,  and  nothing  serious  could 
have  passed  between  the  raw  youth  and  this 


6      FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

little  girl  who  learned  the  lessons  that  he  im- 
posed upon  her. 

Such  acquaintance  as  they  had  was  rudely 
broken  off.  Temple,  a  man  of  high  position, 
treated  Swift  with  an  urbane  condescen- 
sion which  drove  the  young  man's  independ- 
ent soul  into  a  frenzy.  He  returned  to  Ire- 
land, where  he  was  ordained  a  clergyman, 
and  received  a  small  parish  at  Ealroot,  near 
Belfast. 

It  was  here  that  the  love-note  was  first  seri- 
ously heard  in  the  discordant  music  of  Swift's 
career.  A  college  friend  of  his  named  Waring 
had  a  sister  who  was  about  the  age  of  Swift, 
and  whom  he  met  quite  frequently  at  Kilroot. 
Not  very  much  is  known  of  this  episode,  but 
there  is  evidence  that  Swift  fell  in  love  with 
the  girl,  whom  he  rather  romantically  called 
**Varina." 

This  cannot  be  called  a  serious  love-affair. 
Swift  was  lonely,  and  Jane  Waring  was  prob- 
ably the  only  girl  of  refinement  who  lived  near 
Kilroot.  Furthermore,  she  had  inherited  a 
small  fortune,  while  Swift  was  miserably  poor, 
and  had  nothing  to  offer  except  the  shadowy 
prospect  of  future  advancement  in  England. 
He   was    definitely   refused   by   her;    and   it 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS      7 

was  this,  perhaps,  that  led  him  to  resolve 
on  going  back  to  England  and  making  his 
peace  with  Sir  William  Temple. 

On  leaving,  Swift  wrote  a  passionate  letter 
to  Miss  Waring — ^the  only  true  love-letter  that 
remains  to  us  of  their  correspondence.  He  pro- 
tests that  he  does  not  want  Varina^s  fortune, 
and  that  he  will  wait  until  he  is  in  a  position  to 
marry  her  on  equal  terms.  There  is  a  smolder- 
ing flame  of  jealousy  running  through  the  let- 
ter. Swift  charges  her  with  being  cold,  affected, 
and  willing  to  flirt  with  persons  who  are  quite 
beneath  her. 

Varina  played  no  important  part  in  Swift's 
larger  life  thereafter;  but  something  must  be 
said  of  this  affair  in  order  to  show,  first  of  all, 
that  Swift's  love  for  her  was  due  only  to  prox- 
imity, and  that  when  he  ceased  to  feel  it  he 
could  be  not  only  hard,  but  harsh.  His  fiery 
spirit  must  have  made  a  deep  impression  on 
Miss  Waring;  for  though  she  at  the  time  re- 
fused him,  she  afterward  remembered  him, 
and  tried  to  renew  their  old  relations.  Indeed, 
no  sooner  had  Swift  been  made  rector  of  a 
larger  parish,  than  Varina  let  him  know  that  she 
had  changed  her  mind,  and  was  ready  to  marry 
him ;  but  by  this  time  Swift  had  lost  all  interest 


8      FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

in  her.  He  wrote  an  answer  which  even  his 
truest  admirers  have  called  brutal. 

**Yes,"  he  said  in  substance,  **I  will  marry 
you,  though  you  have  treated  me  vilely,  and 
though  you  are  living  in  a  sort  of  social  sink. 
I  am  still  poor,  though  you  probably  think 
otherwise.  However,  I  will  marry  you  on  cer- 
tain conditions.  First,  you  must  be  educated, 
so  that  you  can  entertain  me.  Next,  you  must 
put  up  with  all  my  whims  and  likes  and  dis- 
likes. Then  you  must  live  wherever  I  please. 
On  these  terms  I  will  take  you,  without  refer- 
ence to  your  looks  or  to  your  income.  As  to 
the  first,  cleanliness  is  all  that  I  require ;  as  to 
the  second,  I  only  ask  that  it  be  enough." 

Such  a  letter  as  this  was  like  a  blow  from  a 
bludgeon.  The  insolence,  the  contempt,  and  the 
hardness  of  it  were  such  as  no  self-respecting 
woman  could  endure.  It  put  an  end  to  their 
acquaintance,  as  Swift  undoubtedly  intended  it 
should  do.  He  would  have  been  less  censurable 
had  he  struck  Varina  with  his  fist  or  kicked  her. 

The  true  reason  for  Swift's  utter  change  of 
heart  is  found,  no  doubt,  in  the  beginning  of 
what  was  destined  to  be  his  long  intimacy  with 
Esther  Johnson.  When  Swift  left  Sir  William 
Temple's  in  a  huff,  Esther  had  been  a  mere 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS      9 

schoolgirl.  Now,  on  his  return,  she  was  fifteen 
years  of  age,  and  seemed  older.  She  had  blos- 
somed out  into  a  very  comely  girl,  vivacious, 
clever,  and  physically  well  developed,  with  dark 
hair,  sparkling  eyes,  and  features  that  were  un- 
usually regular  and  lovely. 

For  three  years  the  two  were  close  friends 
and  intimate  associates,  though  it  cannot  be 
said  that  Swift  ever  made  open  love  to  her. 
To  the  outward  eye  they  were  no  more  than 
fellow  workers.  Yet  love  does  not  need  the 
spoken  word  and  the  formal  declaration  to  give 
it  life  and  make  it  deep  and  strong.  Esther 
Johnson,  to  whom  Swift  gave  the  pet  name  of 
"Stella,"  grew  into  the  existence  of  this  fiery, 
bold,  and  independent  genius.  All  that  he  did 
she  knew.  She  was  his  confidante.  As  to  his 
writings,  his  hopes,  and  his  enmities,  she  was 
the  mistress  of  all  his  secrets.  For  her,  at  last, 
no  other  man  existed. 

On  Sir  William  Temple's  death,  Esther  John- 
son came  into  a  small  fortune,  though  she  now 
lost  her  home  at  Moor  Park.  Swift  returned 
to  Ireland,  and  soon  afterward  he  invited 
Stella  to  join  him  there. 

Swift  was  now  thirty-four  years  of  age,  and 
Stella  a  very  attractive  girl  of  twenty.    One 


10     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

might  have  expected  that  the  two  would  marry, 
and  yet  they  did  not  do  so.  Every  precaution 
was  taken  to  avoid  anything  like  scandal. 
Stella  was  accompanied  by  a  friend — a  widow 
named  Mrs.  Dingley — without  whose  presence, 
or  that  of  some  third  person.  Swift  never  saw 
Esther  Johnson.  When  Swift  was  absent,  how- 
ever, the  two  ladies  occupied  his  apartments; 
and  Stella  became  more  than  ever  essential  to 
his  happiness. 

When  they  were  separated  for  any  length  of 
time  Swift  wrote  to  Stella  in  a  sort  of  baby-talk, 
which  they  called  *  *  the  little  language. ' '  It  was 
made  up  of  curious  abbreviations  and  childish 
words,  growing  more  and  more  complicated  as 
the  years  went  on.  It  is  interesting  to  think  of 
this  stern  and  often  savage  genius,  who  loved 
to  hate,  and  whose  hate  was  almost  less  terrible 
than  his  love,  babbling  and  prattling  in  little 
half  caressing  sentences,  as  a  mother  might 
babble  over  her  first  child.  Pedantic  writers 
have  professed  to  find  in  Swift's  use  of  this 
''little  language"  the  coming  shadow  of  that 
insanity  which  struck  him  down  in  his  old  age. 

As  it  is,  these  letters  are  among  the  curiosi- 
ties of  amatory  correspondence.  When  Swift 
writes  "oo"  for  **you,"  and  **deelest"  for 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS    11 

*' dearest,"  and  "vely*'  for  **very,"  there  is  no 
need  of  an  interpreter;  but  **rettle"  for  ** let- 
ter," ''dallars"  for  "girls,"  and  "givar"  for 
** devil,"  are  at  first  rather  difficult  to  guess. 
Then  there  is  a  system  of  abbreviating.  *'Md" 
means  "my  dear,"  "Ppt"  means  "poppet," 
and  "Pdfr,"  with  which  Swift  sometimes  signed 
his  epistles,  "poor,  dear,  foolish  rogue." 

The  letters  reveal  how  very  closely  the  two 
were  bound  together,  yet  still  there  was  no  talk 
of  marriage.  On  one  occasion,  after  they  had 
been  together  for  three  years  in  Ireland,  Stella 
might  have  married  another  man.  This  was  a 
friend  of  Swift's,  one  Dr.  Tisdall,  who  made 
energetic  love  to  the  sweet-faced  English  girl. 
Tisdall  accused  Swift  of  poisoning  Stella's 
mind  against  him.  Swift  replied  that  such  was 
not  the  case.  He  said  that  no  feelings  of  his 
own  would  ever  lead  him  to  influence  the  girl 
if  she  preferred  another. 

It  is  quite  sure,  then,  that  Stella  clung  wholly 
to  Swift,  and  cared  nothing  for  the  proffered 
love  of  any  other  man.  Thus  through  the  years 
the  relations  of  the  two  remained  unchanged, 
until  in  1710  Swift  left  Ireland  and  appeared  as 
a  very  brilliant  figure  in  the  London  drawing- 
rooms  of  the  great  Tory  leaders  of  the  day. 

IV.— 2 


12    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

He  was  now  a  man  of  mark,  because  of  his 
ability  as  a  controversialist.  He  had  learned 
the  manners  of  the  world,  and  he  carried  him- 
self with  an  air  of  power  which  impressed  all 
those  who  met  him.  Among  these  persons  was 
a  Miss  Hester — or  Esther — Vanhomrigh,  the 
daughter  of  a  rather  wealthy  widow  who  was 
living  in  London  at  that  time.  Miss  Vanhom- 
righ— a  name  which  she  and  her  mother  pro- 
nounced *'Vanmeury" — ^was  then  seventeen 
years  of  age,  or  twelve  years  younger  than  the 
patient  Stella. 

Esther  Johnson,  through  her  long  acquaint- 
ance with  Swift,  and  from  his  confidence  in  her, 
had  come  to  treat  him  almost  as  an  intellectual 
equal.  She  knew  all  his  moods,  some  of  which 
were  very  difficult,  and  she  bore  them  all; 
though  when  he  was  most  tyrannous  she  be- 
came only  passive,  waiting,  with  a  woman's 
wisdom,  for  the  tempest  to  blow  over. 

Miss  Vanhomrigh,  on  the  other  hand,  was  one 
of  those  girls  who,  though  they  have  high 
spirit,  take  an  almost  voluptuous  delight  in 
yielding  to  a  spirit  that  is  stronger  still.  This 
beautiful  creature  felt  a  positive  fascination  in 
Swift's  presence  and  his  imperious  manner. 
When  his  eyes  flashed,  and  his  voice  thundered 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS    13 

out  words  of  anger,  she  looked  at  him  with 
adoration,  and  bowed  in  a  sort  of  ecstasy  before 
him.  If  he  chose  to  accost  a  great  lady  with 
**Well,  madam,  are  you  as  ill-natured  and  dis- 
agreeable as  when  I  met  you  last?"  Esther 
Vanhomrigh  thrilled  at  the  insolent  audacity 
of  the  man.  Her  evident  fondness  for  him  exer- 
cised a  seductive  influence  over  Swift. 

As  the  two  were  thrown  more  and  more  to- 
gether, the  girl  lost  all  her  self-control.  Swift 
did  not  in  any  sense  make  love  to  her,  though 
he  gave  her  the  somewhat  fanciful  name  of 
** Vanessa";  but  she,  driven  on  by  a  high- 
strung,  unbridled  temperament,  made  open  love 
to  him.  When  he  was  about  to  return  to  Ire- 
land, there  came  one  startling  moment  when 
Vanessa  flung  herself  into  the  arms  of  Swift, 
and  amazed  him  by  pouring  out  a  torrent  of 
passionate  endearments. 

Swift  seems  to  have  been  surprised.  He  did 
what  he  could  to  quiet  her.  He  told  her  that 
they  were  too  unequal  in  years  and  fortune  for 
anything  but  friendship,  and  he  offered  to  give 
her  as  much  friendship  as  she  desired. 

Doubtless  he  thought  that,  after  returning 
to  Ireland,  he  would  not  see  Vanessa  any  more. 
In  this,  however,  he  was  mistaken.    An  ardent 


14    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

girl,  with  a  fortune  of  her  own,  was  not  to  be 
kept  from  the  man  whom  absence  only  made 
her  love  the  more.  In  addition,  Swift  carried 
on  his  correspondence  with  her,  which  served 
to  fan  the  flame  and  to  increase  the  sway  that 
Swift  had  already  acquired. 

Vanessa  wrote,  and  with  every  letter  she 
burned  and  pined.  Swift  replied,  and  each  re- 
ply enhanced  her  yearning  for  him.  Ere  long, 
Vanessa's  mother  died,  and  Vanessa  herself 
hastened  to  Ireland  and  took  up  her  residence 
near  Dublin.  There,  for  years,  was  enacted 
this  tragic  comedy — Esther  Johnson  was  near 
Swift,  and  had  all  his  confidence ;  Esther  Van- 
homrigh  was  kept  apart  from  him,  while  still 
receiving  missives  from  him,  and,  later,  even 
visits. 

It  was  at  this  time,  after  he  had  become  dean 
of  St.  Patrick's  Cathedral,  in  Dublin,  that  Swift 
was  married  to  Esther  Johnson — for  it  seems 
probable  that  the  ceremony  took  place,  though 
it  was  nothing  more  than  a  form.  They  still 
saw  each  other  only  in  the  presence  of  a  third 
person.  Nevertheless,  some  knowledge  of  their 
close  relationship  leaked  out.  Stella  had  been 
jealous  of  her  rival  during  the  years  that  Swift 
spent  in  London.    Vanessa  was  now  told  that 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS    15 

Swift  was  married  to  the  other  woman,  or  that 
she  was  his  mistress.  Writhing  with  jealousy, 
she  wrote  directly  to  Stella,  and  asked  whether 
she  was  Dean  Swift's  wife.  In  answer  Stella 
replied  that  she  was,  and  then  she  sent  Va- 
nessa's letter  to  Swift  himself. 

All  the  fury  of  his  nature  was  roused  in  him ; 
and  he  was  a  man  who  could  he  very  terrihle 
when  angry.  He  might  have  remembered  the 
intense  love  which  Vanessa  bore  for  him,  the 
humility  with  which  she  had  accepted  his  con- 
ditions, and,  finally,  the  loneliness  of  this  girl. 

But  Swift  was  utterly  unsparing.  No  gleam 
of  pity  entered  his  heart  as  he  leaped  upon  a 
horse  and  galloped  out  to  Marley  Abbey,  where 
she  was  living — "his  prominent  eyes  arched  by 
jet-black  brows  and  glaring  with  the  green  fury 
of  a  cat 's. ' '  Reaching  the  house,  he  dashed  into 
it,  with  something  awful  in  his  looks,  made  his 
way  to  Vanessa,  threw  her  letter  down  upon  the 
table  and,  after  giving  her  one  frightful  glare, 
turned  on  his  heel,  and  in  a  moment  more  was 
galloping  back  to  Dublin. 

The  girl  fell  to  the  floor  in  an  agony  of  terror 
and  remorse.  She  was  taken  to  her  room,  and 
only  three  weeks  afterward  was  carried  forth, 
having  died  literally  of  a  broken  heart. 


16    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Five  years  later,  Stella  also  died,  withering 
away  a  sacrifice  to  what  the  world  has  called 
Swift's  cruel  heartlessness  and  egotism.  His 
greatest  public  triumphs  came  to  him  in  his 
final  years  of  melancholy  isolation ;  but  in  spite 
of  the  applause  that  greeted  The  Drapier 
Letters  and  Gulliver's  Travels,  he  brooded 
morbidly  over  his  past  life.  At  last  his 
powerful  mind  gave  way,  so  that  he  died  a 
victim  to  senile  dementia.  By  his  directions 
his  body  was  interred  in  the  same  coffin  with 
Stella's,  in  the  cathedral  of  which  he  had  been 
dean. 

Such  is  the  story  of  Dean  Swift,  and  it  has 
always  suggested  several  curious  questions. 
Why,  if  he  loved  Stella,  did  he  not  marry  her 
long  before?  Why,  when  he  married  her,  did 
he  treat  her  still  as  if  she  were  not  his  wife? 
Why  did  he  allow  Vanessa's  love  to  run  like  a 
scarlet  thread  across  the  fabric  of  the  other  af- 
fection, which  must  have  been  so  strong? 

Many  answers  have  been  given  to  these  ques- 
tions. That  which  was  formulated  by  Sir 
Walter  Scott  is  a  simple  one,  and  has  been 
generally  accepted.  Scott  believed  that  Swift 
was  physically  incapacitated  for  marriage,  and 
that  he  needed  feminine  sympathy,  which  he 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS    17 

took  where  he  could  get  it,  without  feeling  bound 
to  give  anything  in  return. 

If  Scott 's  explanation  be  the  true  one,  it  still 
leaves  Swift  exposed  to  ignominy  as  a  monster 
of  ingratitude.  Therefore,  many  of  his  biog- 
raphers have  sought  other  explanations.  No 
one  can  palliate  his  conduct  toward  Vanessa; 
but  Sir  Leslie  Stephen  makes  a  plea  for  him 
with  reference  to  Stella.  Sir  Leslie  points  out 
that  until  Swift  became  dean  of  St.  Patrick's 
his  income  was  far  too  small  to  marry  on,  and 
that  after  his  brilliant  but  disappointing  three 
years  in  London,  when  his  prospects  of  ad- 
vancement were  ruined,  he  felt  himself  a  broken 
man. 

Furthermore,  his  health  was  always  precari- 
ous, since  he  suffered  from  a  distressing  illness 
which  attacked  him  at  intervals,  rendering  him 
both  deaf  and  giddy.  The  disease  is  now  known 
as  Meniere's  disease,  from  its  classification  by 
the  French  physician,  Meniere,  in  1861.  Swift 
felt  that  he  lived  in  constant  danger  of  some 
sudden  stroke  that  would  deprive  him  either  of 
life  or  reason ;  and  his  ultimate  insanity  makes 
it  appear  that  his  forebodings  were  not  wholly 
futile.  Therefore,  though  he  married  Stella,  he 
kept  the  marriage  secret,  thus  leaving  her  free. 


18     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

in  case  of  his  demise,  to  marry  as  a  maiden,  and 
not  to  be  regarded  as  a  widow. 

Sir  Leslie  offers  the  further  plea  that,  after 
all,  Stella's  life  was  what  she  chose  to  make 
it.  She  enjoyed  Swift's  friendship,  which 
she  preferred  to  the  love  of  any  other 
man. 

Another  view  is  that  of  Dr.  Richard  Garnett, 
who  has  discussed  the  question  with  some  sub- 
tlety. ** Swift,"  says  Dr.  Garnett,  **was  by  na- 
ture devoid  of  passion.  He  was  fully  capable 
of  friendship,  but  not  of  love.  The  spiritual 
realm,  whether  of  divine  or  earthly  things,  was 
a  region  closed  to  him,  where  he  never  set 
foot."  On  the  side  of  friendship  he  must 
greatly  have  preferred  Stella  to  Vanessa,  and 
yet  the  latter  assailed  him  on  his  weakest  side 
— on  the  side  of  his  love  of  imperious 
domination. 

Vanessa  hugged  the  fetters  to  which  Stella  merely 
submitted.  Flattered  to  excess  by  her  surrender,  yet 
conscious  of  his  obligations  and  his  real  preference, 
he  could  neither  discard  the  one  beauty  nor  desert 
the  other. 

Therefore,  he  temporized  with  both  of  them, 
and  when  the  choice  was  forced  upon  him  he 


SWIFT  AND  THE  TWO  ESTHERS     19 

madly  struck  down  the  woman  for  whom  he 
cared  the  less. 

One  may  accept  Dr.  Garnett's  theory  with  a 
somewhat  altered  conclusion.  It  is  not  true, 
as  a  matter  of  recorded  fact,  that  Swift  was 
incapable  of  passion,  for  when  a  boy  at  college 
he  was  sought  out  by  various  young  women, 
and  he  sought  them  out  in  turn.  His  fiery 
letter  to  Miss  Waring  points  to  the  same  con- 
clusion. When  Esther  Johnson  began  to  love 
him  he  was  heart-free,  yet  unable,  because  of 
his  straitened  means,  to  marry.  But  Esther 
Johnson  always  appealed  more  to  his  reason, 
his  friendship,  and  his  comfort,  than  to  his  love, 
using  the  word  in  its  material,  physical  sense. 
This  love  was  stirred  in  him  by  Vanessa.  Yet 
when  he  met  Vanessa  he  had  already  gone  too 
far  with  Esther  Johnson  to  break  the  bond 
which  had  so  long  united  them,  nor  could  he 
think  of  a  life  without  her,  for  she  was  to  him 
his  other  self. 

At  the  same  time,  his  more  romantic  associa- 
tion with  Vanessa  roused  those  instincts  which 
he  had  scarcely  known  himself  to  be  possessed 
of.  His  position  was,  therefore,  most  embar- 
rassing. He  hoped  to  end  it  when  he  left  Lon- 
don and  returned  to  Ireland;  but  fate  was  un- 


20     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

kind  to  him  in  this,  because  Vanessa  followed 
him.  He  lacked  the  will  to  be  frank  with  her, 
and  thus  he  stood  a  wretched,  halting  victim 
of  his  own  dual  nature. 

He  was  a  clergyman,  and  at  heart  religious. 
He  had  also  a  sense  of  honor,  and  both  of  these 
traits  compelled  him  to  remain  true  to  Esther 
Johnson.  The  terrible  outbreak  which  brought 
about  Vanessa's  death  was  probably  the  wild 
frenzy  of  a  tortured  soul.  It  recalls  the  picture 
of  some  fierce  animal  brought  at  last  to  bay,  and 
venting  its  own  anguish  upon  any  object  that 
is  within  reach  of  its  fangs  and  claws. 

No  matter  how  the  story  may  be  told,  it  makes 
one  shiver,  for  it  is  a  tragedy  in  which  the  three 
participants  all  meet  their  doom — one  crushed 
by  a  lightning-bolt  of  unreasoning  anger,  the 
other  wasting  away  through  hope  deferred; 
while  the  man  whom  the  world  will  always  hold 
responsible  was  himself  destined  to  end  his 
years  blind  and  sleepless,  bequeathing  his  for- 
tune to  a  madhouse,  and  saying,  with  his  last 
muttered  breath : 

**Iamafool!'» 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  AND 
MARY  GODWIN 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY  AND  MAEY 
GODWIN 

A  GREAT  deal  has  been  said  and  written  in 
^. favor  of  early  marriage;  and,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  early  marriage  may  be  an  admirable 
thing.  Young  men  and  young  women  who  have 
no  special  gift  of  imagination,  and  who  have 
practically  reached  their  full  mental  develop- 
ment at  twenty-one  or  twenty-two — or  earlier, 
even  in  their  teens — may  marry  safely ;  because 
they  are  already  what  they  will  be.  They  are 
not  going  to  experience  any  growth  upward  and 
outward.  Passing  years  simply  bring  them 
more  closely  together,  until  they  have  settled 
down  into  a  sort  of  domestic  unity,  by  which 
they  think  alike,  act  alike,  and  even  gradually 
come  to  look  alike. 

But  early  wedlock  spells  tragedy  to  the  man 
or  the  woman  of  genius.  In  their  teens  they 
have  only  begun  to  grow.  What  they  will  be 
ten  years  hence,  no  one  can  prophesy.  There- 
fore, to  mate  so  early  in  life  is  to  insure  almost 

23 


24    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

certain  storm  and  stress,  and,  in  the  end,  do- 
mestic wreckage. 

As  a  rule,  it  is  the  man,  and  not  the  woman, 
who  makes  the  false  step;  because  it  is  the 
man  who  elects  to  marry  when  he  is  still  very- 
young.  If  he  choose  some  ill-fitting,  common- 
place, and  unresponsive  nature  to  match  his 
own,  it  is  he  who  is  bound  in  the  course  of  time 
to  learn  his  great  mistake.  When  the  splendid 
eagle  shall  have  got  his  growth,  and  shall  begin 
to  soar  up  into  the  vault  of  heaven,  the  poor 
little  ham-yard  fowl  that  he  once  believed  to 
be  his  equal  seems  very  far  away  in  every- 
thing. He  discovers  that  she  is  quite  unable 
to  follow  him  in  his  towering  flights. 

The  story  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  is  a  sin- 
gular one.  The  circumstances  of  his  early  mar- 
riage were  strange.  The  breaking  of  his 
marriage-bond  was  also  strange.  Shelley  him- 
self was  an  extraordinary  creature.  He  was 
blamed  a  great  deal  in  his  lifetime  for  what  he 
did,  and  since  then  some  have  echoed  the  re- 
proach. Yet  it  would  seem  as  if,  at  the  very 
beginning  of  his  life,  he  was  put  into  a  false 
position  against  his  will.  Because  of  this  he 
was  misunderstood  until  the  end  of  his  brief 
and  brilliant  and  erratic  career. 


SHELLEY  AND  MAEY  GODWIN    25 

In  1792  the  French  Revolution  burst  into 
flame,  the  mob  of  Paris  stormed  the  Tuileries, 
the  King  of  France  was  cast  into  a  dungeon  to 
await  his  execution,  and  the  wild  sons  of 
anarchy  flung  their  gauntlet  of  defiance  into  the 
face  of  Europe.  In  this  tremendous  year  was 
born  young  Shelley;  and  perhaps  his  nature 
represented  the  spirit  of  the  time. 

Certainly,  neither  from  his  father  nor  from 
his  mother  did  he  derive  that  perpetual  unrest 
and  that  frantic  fondness  for  revolt  which 
blazed  out  in  the  poet  when  he  was  still  a  boy. 
His  father,  Mr.  Timothy  Shelley,  was  a  very 
usual,  thick-headed,  unromantic  English  squire. 
His  mother — a  woman  of  much  beauty,  but  of 
no  exceptional  traits — ^was  the  daughter  of  an- 
other squire,  and  at  the  time  of  her  marriage 
was  simply  one  of  ten  thousand  fresh-faced, 
pleasant-spoken  English  country  girls.  If  we 
look  for  a  strain  of  the  romantic  in  Shelley  *s 
ancestry,  we  shall  have  to  find  it  in  the  person 
of  his  grandfather,  who  was  a  very  remarkable 
and  powerful  character. 

This  person,  Bysshe  Shelley  by  name,  had  in 
his  youth  been  associated  with  some  mystery. 
He  was  not  bom  in  England,  but  in  America — 
and  in  those  days  the  name  **  America"  meant 


26     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

almost  anything  indefinite  and  peculiar.  How- 
ever this  might  be,  Bysshe  Shelley,  though  a 
scion  of  a  good  old  English  family,  had  wan- 
dered in  strange  lands,  and  it  was  whispered 
that  he  had  seen  strange  sights  and  done 
strange  things.  According  to  one  legend,  he 
had  been  married  in  America,  though  no  one 
knew  whether  his  wife  was  white  or  black,  or 
how  he  had  got  rid  of  her. 

He  might  have  remained  in  America  all  his 
life,  had  not  a  small  inheritance  fallen  to  his 
share.  This  brought  him  back  to  England,  and 
he  soon  found  that  England  was  in  reality  the 
place  to  make  his  fortune.  He  was  a  man  of 
magnificent  physique.  His  rovings  had  given 
him  ease  and  grace,  and  the  power  which  comes 
from  a  wide  experience  of  life.  He  could  be 
extremely  pleasing  when  he  chose ;  and  he  soon 
won  his  way  into  the  good  graces  of  a  rich 
heiress,  whom  he  married. 

With  her  wealth  he  became  an  important  per- 
sonage, and  consorted  with  gentlemen  and 
statesmen  of  influence,  attaching  himself  par- 
ticularly to  the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  by 
whose  influence  he  was  made  a  baronet.  When 
his  rich  wife  died,  Shelley  married  a  still  richer 
bride;  and  so  this  man,  who  started  out  as  a 


SHELLEY  AND  MAEY  GODWIN    27 

mere  adventurer  without  a  shilling  to  his  name, 
died  in  1813,  leaving  more  than  a  million  dollars 
in  cash,  with  lands  whose  rent-roll  yielded  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  every  year. 

If  any  touch  of  the  romantic  which  we  find 
in  Shelley  is  a  matter  of  heredity,  we  must 
trace  it  to  this  able,  daring,  restless,  and  mag- 
nificent old  grandfather,  who  was  the  beau 
ideal  of  an  English  squire — the  sort  of  squire 
who  had  added  foreign  graces  to  native  sturdi- 
ness.  But  young  Shelley,  the  future  poet, 
seemed  scarcely  to  be  English  at  all.  As  a 
young  boy  he  cared  nothing  for  athletic  sports. 
He  was  given  to  much  reading.  He  thought  a 
good  deal  about  abstractions  with  which  most 
schoolboys  never  concern  themselves  at  all. 

Consequently,  both  in  private  schools  and 
afterward  at  Eton,  he  became  a  sort  of  rebel 
against  authority.  He  resisted  the  fagging- 
system.  He  spoke  contemptuously  of  physical 
prowess.  He  disliked  anything  that  he  was 
obliged  to  do,  and  he  rushed  eagerly  into  what- 
ever was  forbidden. 

Finally,  when  he  was  sent  to  University  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  he  broke  all  bounds.  At  a  time 
when  Tory  England  was  aghast  over  the 
French   Revolution    and   its    results,    Shelley 

IV.— 3 


28     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

talked  of  liberty  and  equality  on  all  occasions. 
He  made  friends  with  an  uncouth  but  able 
fellow  student,  who  bore  the  remarkable  name 
of  Thomas  Jefferson  Hogg — a  name  that  seems 
rampant  with  republicanism — and  very  soon  he 
got  himself  expeUed  from  the  university  for 
publishing  a  little  tract  of  an  infidel  character 
eaUed  **  A  Defense  of  Atheism." 

His  expulsion  for  such  a  cause  naturally 
shocked  his  father.  It  probably  disturbed 
Shelley  himself ;  but,  after  all,  it  gave  him  some 
satisfaction  to  be  a  martyr  for  the  cause  of  free 
speech.  He  went  to  London  with  his  friend 
Hogg,  and  took  lodgings  there.  He  read  om- 
nivorously — Hogg  says  as  much  as  sixteen 
hours  a  day.  He  would  walk  through  the  most 
crowded  streets  poring  over  a  volume,  while 
holding  another  under  one  arm. 

His  mind  was  full  of  fancies.  He  had  begun 
what  was  afterward  called  **his  passion  for  re- 
forming everything."  He  despised  most  of  the 
laws  of  England.  He  thought  its  Parliament 
ridiculous.  He  hated  its  religion.  He  was  par- 
ticularly opposed  to  marriage.  This  last  fact 
gives  some  point  to  the  circumstances  which 
almost  immediately  confronted  him. 

Shelley  was  now  about  nineteen  years  old — 


SHELLEY  AND  MAEY  GODWIN    29 

an  age  at  which  most  English  boys  are  emerg- 
ing from  the  public  schools,  and  are  still  in  the 
hobbledehoy  stage  of  their  formation.  In  a 
way,  he  was  quite  far  from  boyish;  yet  in  his 
knowledge  of  life  he  was  little  more  than  a  mere 
child.  He  knew  nothing  thoroughly — much  less 
the  ways  of  men  and  women.  He  had  no  visible 
means  of  existence  except  a  small  allowance 
from  his  father.  His  four  sisters,  who  were  at 
a  boarding-school  on  Clapham  Common,  used 
to  save  their  pin-money  and  send  it  to  their 
gifted  brother  so  that  he  might  not  actually 
starve.  These  sisters  he  used  to  call  upon  from 
time  to  time,  and  through  them  he  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  a  sixteen-year-old  girl  named 
Harriet  Westbrook. 

Harriet  Westbrook  was  the  daughter  of  a 
black-visaged  keeper  of  a  coffee-house  in  Mount 
Street,  called  **  Jew  Westbrook,"  partly  because 
of  his  complexion,  and  partly  because  of  his 
ability  to  retain  what  he  had  made.  He  was, 
indeed,  fairly  well  off,  and  had  sent  his  younger 
daughter,  Harriet,  to  the  school  where  Shelley's 
sisters  studied. 

Harriet  Westbrook  seems  to  have  been  a  most 
precocious  person.  Any  girl  of  sixteen  is,  of 
course,  a  great  deal  older  and  more  mature  than 


30     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

a  youth  of  nineteen.  In  the  present  instance 
Harriet  might  have  been  Shelley  *s  senior  by 
five  years.  There  is  no  doubt  that  she  fell  in 
love  with  him;  but,  having  done  so,  she  by  no 
means  acted  in  the  shy  and  timid  way  that 
would  have  been  most  natural  to  a  very  young 
girl  in  her  first  love-affair.  Having  decided  that 
she  wanted  him,  she  made  up  her  mind  to  get 
him  at  any  cost,  and  her  audacity  was  equaled 
only  by  his  simplicity.  She  was  rather  attrac- 
tive in  appearance,  with  abundant  hair,  a  plump 
figure,  and  a  pink-and-white  complexion.  This 
description  makes  of  her  a  rather  doll-like  girl ; 
but  doll-like  girls  are  just  the  sort  to  attract 
an  inexperienced  young  man  who  has  yet  to 
learn  that  beauty  and  charm  are  quite  distinct 
from  prettiness,  and  infinitely  superior  to  it. 

In  addition  to  her  prettiness,  Harriet  West- 
brook  had  a  vivacious  manner  and  talked  quite 
pleasingly.  She  was  likewise  not  a  bad  listener ; 
and  she  would  listen  by  the  hour  to  Shelley  in 
his  rhapsodies  about  chemistry,  poetry,  the  fail- 
ure of  Christianity,  the  national  debt,  and 
human  liberty,  all  of  which  he  jumbled  up  with- 
out much  knowledge,  but  in  a  lyric  strain  of 
impassioned  eagerness  which  would  probably 
have  made  the  multiplication-table  thrilling. 


SHELLEY  AND  MARY  GODWIN        31 

For  Shelley  himself  was  a  creature  of  ex- 
traordinary fascination,  both  then  and  after- 
ward. There  are  no  likenesses  of  him  that  do 
him  justice,  because  they  cannot  convey  that 
singular  appeal  which  the  man  himself  made  to 
almost  every  one  who  met  him. 

The  eminent  painter,  Mulready,  once  said 
that  Shelley  was  too  beautiful  for  portraiture ; 
and  yet  the  descriptions  of  him  hardly  seem  to 
bear  this  out.  He  was  quite  tall  and  slender, 
but  he  stooped  so  much  as  to  make  him  appear 
undersized.  His  head  was  very  small — quite 
disproportionately  so;  but  this  was  counter- 
acted to  the  eye  by  his  long  and  tumbled  hair 
which,  when  excited,  he  would  rub  and  twist 
in  a  thousand  different  directions  until  it  was 
actually  bushy.  His  eyes  and  mouth  were  his 
best  features.  The  former  were  of  a  deep  vio- 
let blue,  and  when  Shelley  felt  deeply  moved 
they  seemed  luminous  with  a  wonderful  and 
almost  unearthly  light.  His  mouth  was  finely 
chiseled,  and  might  be  regarded  as  representing 
perfection. 

One  great  defect  he  had,  and  this  might  well 
have  overbalanced  his  attractive  face.  The  de- 
fect in  question  was  his  voice.  One  would  have 
expected  to  hear  from  him  melodious  sounds, 


32     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

and  vocal  tones  both  rich  and  penetrating ;  but, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  his  voice  was  shrill  at  the 
very  best,  and  became  actually  discordant  and 
peacock-like  in  moments  of  emotion. 

Such,  then,  was  Shelley,  star-eyed,  with  the 
delicate  complexion  of  a  girl,  wonderfully  mo- 
bile in  his  features,  yet  speaking  in  a  voice  high 
pitched  and  almost  raucous.  For  the  rest,  he 
arrayed  himself  with  care  and  in  expensive 
clothing,  even  though  he  took  no  thought  of 
neatness,  so  that  his  garments  were  almost  al- 
ways rumpled  and  wrinkled  from  his  frequent 
writhings  on  couches  and  on  the  floor.  Shelley 
had  a  strange  and  almost  primitive  habit  of 
rolling  on  the  earth,  and  another  of  thrusting 
his  tousled  head  close  up  to  the  hottest  fire  in 
the  house,  or  of  lying  in  the  glaring  sun  when 
out  of  doors.  It  is  related  that  he  composed 
one  of  his  finest  poems — "The  Cenci" — in 
Italy,  while  stretched  out  with  face  upturned  to 
an  almost  tropical  sun. 

But  such  as  he  was,  and  though  he  was  not 
yet  famous,  Harriet  Westbrook,  the  rosy-faced 
schoolgirl,  fell  in  love  with  him,  and  rather 
plainly  let  him  know  that  she  had  done  so. 
There  are  a  thousand  ways  in  which  a  woman 
can  convey  this  information  without  doing  any- 


SHELLEY  AND  MARY  GODWIN        33 

thing  unmaidenly;  and  of  all  these  little  arts 
Miss  Westbrook  was  instinctively  a  mistress. 

She  played  upon  Shelley's  feelings  by  telling 
him  that  her  father  was  cruel  to  her,  and  that 
he  contemplated  actions  still  more  cruel.  There 
is  something  absurdly  comical  about  the  griev- 
ance which  she  brought  to  Shelley;  but  it  is 
much  more  comical  to  note  the  tremendous  seri- 
ousness with  which  he  took  it.  He  wrote  to  his 
friend  Hogg : 

Her  father  has  persecuted  her  in  a  most  horrible 
way,  by  endeavoring  to  compel  her  to  go  to  school. 
She  asked  my  advice ;  resistance  was  the  answer.  At 
the  same  time  I  essayed  to  mollify  Mr.  Westbrook, 
in  vain!  I  advised  her  to  resist.  She  wrote  to  say 
that  resistance  was  useless,  but  that  she  would  fly 
with  me  and  throw  herself  on  my  protection. 

Some  letters  that  have  recently  come  to  light 
show  that  there  was  a  dramatic  scene  between 
Harriet  Westbrook  and  Shelley — a  scene  in  the 
course  of  which  she  threw  her  arms  about  his 
neck  and  wept  upon  his  shoulder.  Here  was  a 
curious  situation.  Shelley  was  not  at  all  in 
love  with  her.  He  had  explicitly  declared  this 
only  a  short  time  before.  Yet  here  was  a  pretty 
girl  about  to  suffer  the  "horrible  persecution" 
of  being  sent  to  school,  and  finding  no  alterna- 


34     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

tive  save  to  "throw  herself  on  his  protection" 
— in  other  words,  to  let  him  treat  her  as  he 
would,  and  to  become  his  mistress. 

The  absurdity  of  the  situation  makes  one 
smile.  Common  sense  should  have  led  some  one 
to  box  Harriet 's  ears  and  send  her  off  to  school 
without  a  moment's  hesitation;  while  as  for 
Shelley,  he  should  have  been  told  how  ludicrous 
was  the  whole  affair.  But  he  was  only  nine- 
teen, and  she  was  only  sixteen,  and  the  crisis 
seemed  portentous.  Nothing  could  be  more 
flattering  to  a  young  man's  vanity  than  to  have 
this  girl  cast  herself  upon  him  for  protection. 
It  did  not  really  matter  that  he  had  not  loved 
her  hitherto,  and  that  he  was  already  half  en- 
gaged to  another  Harriet — his  cousin,  Miss 
Grove.  He  could  not  stop  and  reason  with  him- 
self. He  must  like  a  true  knight  rescue  lovely 
girlhood  from  the  horrors  of  a  school ! 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  this  whole  affair  was 
partly  managed  or  manipulated  by  the  girl's 
father.  Jew  Westbrook  knew  that  Shelley  was 
related  to  rich  and  titled  people,  and  that  he 
was  certain,  if  he  lived,  to  become  Sir  Percy, 
and  to  be  the  heir  of  his  grandfather's  estates. 
Hence  it  may  be  that  Harriet's  queer  conduct 
was  not  wholly  of  her  own  prompting. 


SHELLEY  AND  MARY  GODWIN        35 

In  any  case,  however,  it  proved  to  be  success- 
ful. Shelley's  ardent  and  impulsive  nature 
could  not  bear  to  see  a  girl  in  tears  and  ap- 
pealing for  his  help.  Hence,  though  in  his 
heart  she  was  very  little  to  him,  his  romantic 
nature  gave  up  for  her  sake  the  affection  that 
he  had  felt  for  his  cousin,  his  own  disbelief  in 
marriage,  and  finally  the  common  sense  which 
ought  to  have  told  him  not  to  marry  any  one  on 
two  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

So  the  pair  set  off  for  Edinburgh  by  stage- 
coach. It  was  a  weary  and  most  uncomfortable 
journey.  When  they  reached  the  Scottish  cap- 
ital, they  were  married  by  the  Scottish  law. 
Their  money  was  all  gone;  but  their  landlord, 
with  a  jovial  sympathy  for  romance,  let  them 
have  a  room,  and  treated  them  to  a  rather  pro- 
miscuous wedding-banquet,  in  which  every  one 
in  the  house  participated. 

Such  is  the  story  of  Shelley  *s  marriage,  con- 
tracted at  nineteen  with  a  girl  of  sixteen  who 
most  certainly  lured  him  on  against  his  own 
better  judgment  and  in  the  absence  of  any 
actual  love. 

The  girl  whom  he  had  taken  to  himself  was 
a  well-meaning  little  thing.  She  tried  for  a 
time  to  meet  her  husband's  moods  and  to  be 


36     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

a  real  companion  to  him.  But  what  could  one 
expect  from  such  a  union!  Shelley's  father 
withdrew  the  income  which  he  had  previously 
given.  Jew  Westbrook  refused  to  contribute 
anything,  hoping,  probably,  that  this  course 
would  bring  the  Shelleys  to  the  rescue.  But  as 
it  was,  the  young  pair  drifted  about  from  place 
to  place,  getting  very  precarious  supplies,  run- 
ning deeper  into  debt  each  day,  and  finding  less 
and  less  to  admire  in  each  other. 

Shelley  took  to  laudanum.  Harriet  dropped 
her  abstruse  studies,  which  she  had  taken  up  to 
please  her  husband,  but  which  could  only  puzzle 
her  small  brain.  She  soon  developed  some  of 
the  unpleasant  traits  of  the  class  to  which  she 
belonged.  In  this  her  sister  Eliza — a  hard  and 
grasping  middle-aged  woman — had  her  share. 
She  set  Harriet  against  her  husband,  and  made 
life  less  endurable  for  both.  She  was  so  much 
older  than  the  pair  that  she  came  in  and  ruled 
their  household  like  a  typical  stepmother. 

A  child  was  bom,  and  Shelley  very  gener- 
ously went  through  a  second  form  of  marriage, 
so  as  to  comply  with  the  English  law;  but  by 
this  time  there  was  little  hope  of  righting 
things  again.  Shelley  was  much  offended  be- 
cause Harriet  would  not  nurse  the  child.    He 


SHELLEY  AND  MAEY  GODWIN        37 

believed  her  hard  because  she  saw  without  emo- 
tion an  operation  performed  upon  the  infant. 

Finally,  when  Shelley  at  last  came  into  a  con- 
siderable sum  of  money,  Harriet  and  Eliza 
made  no  pretense  of  caring  for  anything  except 
the  spending  of  it  in  *' bonnet-shops"  and  on 
carriages  and  display.  In  time — that  is  to  say, 
in  three  years  after  their  marriage — Harriet 
left  her  husband  and  went  to  London  and  to 
Bath,  prompted  by  her  elder  sister. 

This  proved  to  be  the  end  of  an  unfortunate 
marriage.  Word  was  brought  to  Shelley  that 
his  wife  was  no  longer  faithful  to  him.  He,  on 
his  side,  had  carried  on  a  semisentimental  pla- 
tonic  correspondence  with  a  schoolmistress,  one 
Miss  Hitchener.  But  until  now  his  life  had  been 
one  great  mistake — a  life  of  restlessness,  of  un- 
satisfied longing,  of  a  desire  that  had  no  name. 
Then  came  the  perhaps  inevitable  meeting  with 
the  one  whom  he  shoijild  have  met  before. 

Shelley  had  taken  a  great  interest  in  William 
Godwin,  the  writer  and  radical  philosopher. 
Godwin's  household  was  a  strange  one.  There 
was  Fanny  Imlay,  a  child  bom  out  of  wedlock, 
the  offspring  of  Gilbert  Imlay,  an  American 
merchant,  and  of  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  whom 
Godwin  had  subsequently  married.    There  was 


38     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

also  a  singularly  striking  girl  who  then  styled 
herself  Mary  Jane  Clairmont,  and  who  was 
afterward  known  as  Claire  Clairmont,  she  and 
her  brother  being  the  early  children  of  God- 
win's second  wife. 

One  day  in  1814,  Shelley  called  on  Godwin, 
and  found  there  a  beautiful  young  girl  in  her 
seventeenth  year,  **with  shapely  golden  head,  a 
face  very  pale  and  pure,  a  great  forehead,  ear- 
nest hazel  eyes,  and  an  expression  at  once  of 
sensibility  and  firmness  about  her  delicately 
curved  lips.**  This  was  Mary  Godwin — one 
who  had  inherited  her  mother's  power  of  mind 
and  likewise  her  grace  and  sweetness. 

From  the  very  moment  of  their  meeting  Shel- 
ley and  this  girl  were  fated  to  be  joined  to- 
gether, and  both  of  them  were  well  aware  of  it. 
Each  felt  the  other's  presence  exert  a  magnetic 
thrill.  Each  listened  eagerly  to  what  the  other 
said.  Each  thought  of  nothing,  and  each  cared 
for  nothing,  in  the  other's  absence.  It  was  a 
great  compelling  elemental  force  which  drove 
the  two  together  and  bound  them  fast.  Beside 
this  marvelous  experience,  how  pale  and  pitiful 
and  paltry  seemed  the  affectations  of  Harriet 
Westbrook ! 

In  little  more  than  a  month  from  the  time  of 


SHELLEY  AND  MARY  GODWIN        39 

their  first  meeting,  Shelley  and  Mary  Godwin 
and  Miss  Clairmont  left  Godwin's  house  at  four 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  hurried  across  the 
Channel  to  Calais.  They  wandered  almost  like 
vagabonds  across  France,  eating  black  bread 
and  the  coarsest  fare,  walking  on  the  highways 
when  they  could  not  afford  to  ride,  and  putting 
up  with  every  possible  inconvenience.  Yet  it  is 
worth  noting  that  neither  then  nor  at  any  other 
time  did  either  Shelley  or  Mary  regret  what 
they  had  done.  To  the  very  end  of  the  poet's 
brief  career  they  were  inseparable. 

Later  he  was  able  to  pension  Harriet,  who, 
being  of  a  morbid  disposition,  ended  her  life  by 
drowning — ^not,  it  may  be  said,  because  of  grief 
for  Shelley.  It  has  been  told  that  Fanny  Imlay, 
Mary's  sister,  likewise  committed  suicide  be- 
cause Shelley  did  not  care  for  her,  but  this  has 
also  been  disproved.  There  was  really  nothing 
to  mar  the  inner  happiness  of  the  poet  and  the 
woman  who,  at  the  very  end,  became  his  wife. 
Living,  as  they  did,  in  Italy  and  Switzerland, 
they  saw  much  of  their  own  countrymen,  such 
as  Landor  and  Leigh  Hunt  and  Byron,  to  whose 
fascinations  poor  Miss  Clairmont  yielded,  and 
became  the  mother  of  the  little  girl  Allegra. 

But  there  could  have  been  no  truer  union 


40     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

than  this  of  Shelley *s  with  the  woman  whom 
nature  had  intended  for  him.  It  was  in  his 
love-life,  far  more  than  in  his  poetry,  that  he 
attained  completeness.  When  he  died  by  drown- 
ing, in  1822,  and  his  body  was  bnrned  in  the 
presence  of  Lord  Byron,  he  was  truly  mourned 
by  the  one  whom  he  had  only  lately  made  his 
wife.  As  a  poet  he  never  reached  the  same  per- 
fection ;  for  his  genius  was  fitful  and  uncertain, 
rare  in  its  flights,  and  mingled  always  with  that 
which  disappoints. 

As  the  lover  and  husband  of  Mary  Godwin, 
there  was  nothing  left  to  wish.  In  his  verse, 
however,  the  truest  word  concerning  him  will 
always  be  that  exquisite  sentence  of  Matthew 
Arnold : 

"A  beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel  beating 
his  luminous  wings  against  the  void  in  vain,** 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES 

TO  most  persons,  Tennyson  was  a  remote 
and  romantic  figure.  His  homes  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight  and  at  Aldworth  had  a  dignified 
seclusion  about  them  which  was  very  appro- 
priate to  so  great  a  poet,  and  invested  him  with 
a  certain  awe  through  which  the  multitude 
rarely  penetrated.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  how- 
ever, he  was  an  excellent  companion,  a  ready 
talker,  and  gifted  with  so  much  wit  that  it  is 
a  pity  that  more  of  his  sayings  have  not  been 
preserved  to  us. 

One  of  the  best  known  is  that  which  was 
drawn  from  him  after  he  and  a  number  of 
friends  had  been  spending  an  hour  in  company 
with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Oarlyle.  The  two  Carlyles 
were  unfortunately  at  their  worst,  and  gave  a 
superb  specimen  of  domestic  *  *  nagging. ' '  Each 
caught  up  whatever  the  other  said,  and  either 
turned  it  into  ridicule,  or  tried  to  make  the 
author  of  it  an  object  of  contempt. 

This  was,  of  course,  exceedingly  uncomfort- 
able for  such  strangers  as  were  present,  and  it 

IV.— 4  48 


44    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

certainly  gave  no  pleasure  to  their  friends.  On 
leaving  the  house,  some  one  said  to  Tennyson: 

"Isn't  it  a  pity  that  such  a  couple  ever  mar- 
ried?" 

*'No,  no,"  said  Tennyson,  with  a  sort  of 
smile  under  his  rough  beard.  *  *  It 's  much  better 
that  two  people  should  be  made  unhappy  than 
four." 

The  world  has  pretty  nearly  come  around  to 
the  verdict  of  the  poet  laureate.  It  is  not  prob- 
able that  Thomas  Carlyle  would  have  made  any 
woman  happy  as  his  wife,  or  that  Jane  Baillie 
Welsh  would  have  made  any  man  happy  as  her 
husband. 

This  sort  of  speculation  would  never  have 
occurred  had  not  Mr.  Froude,  in  the  early 
eighties,  given  his  story  about  the  Carlyles  to 
the  world.  Carlyle  went  to  his  grave,  an  old 
man,  highly  honored,  and  with  no  trail  of  gossip 
behind  him.  His  wife  had  died  some  sixteen 
years  before,  leaving  a  brilliant  memory.  The 
books  of  Mr.  Froude  seemed  for  a  moment  to 
have  desecrated  the  grave,  and  to  have  shed  a 
sudden  and  sinister  light  upon  those  who  could 
not  make  the  least  defense  for  themselves. 

For  a  moment,  Carlyle  seemed  to  have  been 
a  monster  of  harshness,  cruelty,  and  almost 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     45 

brutish  feeling.  On  the  other  side,  his  wife  took 
on  the  color  of  an  evil-speaking,  evil-thinking 
shrew,  who  tormented  the  life  of  her  husband, 
and  allowed  herself  to  be  possessed  by  some 
demon  of  unrest  and  discontent,  such  as  few 
women  of  her  station  are  ever  known  to  suffer 
from. 

Nor  was  it  merely  that  the  two  were  appar- 
ently ill-mated  and  unhappy  with  each  other. 
There  were  hints  and  innuendos  which  looked 
toward  some  hidden  cause  for  this  unhappiness, 
and  which  aroused  the  curiosity  of  every  one. 
That  they  might  be  clearer,  Froude  afterward 
wrote  a  book,  bringing  out  more  plainly — in- 
deed, too  plainly — his  explanation  of  the  Car- 
lyle  family  skeleton.  A  multitude  of  documents 
then  came  from  every  quarter,  and  from  al- 
most every  one  who  had  known  either  of  the 
Carlyles.  Perhaps  the  result  to-day  has  been 
more  injurious  to  Froude  than  to  the  two  Car- 
lyles. 

Many  persons  unjustly  speak  of  Froude  as- 
having  violated  the  confidence  of  his  friends  in 
publishing  the  letters  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Carlyle. 
They  take  no  heed  of  the  fact  that  in  doing  this 
he  was  obeying  Carlyle  *s  express  wishes,  left 
behind  in  writing,  and  often  urged  on  Froude 


46     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

while  Carlyle  was  still  alive.  Whether  or  not 
Froude  ought  to  have  accepted  such  a  trust, 
one  may  perhaps  hesitate  to  decide.  That  he 
did  so  is  probably  because  he  felt  that  if  he 
refused,  Carlyle  might  commit  the  same  duty  to 
another,  who  would  discharge  it  with  less  deli- 
cacy and  less  discretion. 

As  it  is,  the  blame,  if  it  rests  upon  any  one, 
should  rest  upon  Carlyle.  He  collected  the  let- 
ters. He  wrote  the  lines  which  burn  and  scorch 
with  self-reproach.  It  is  he  who  pressed  upon 
the  reluctant  Froude  the  duty  of  printing  and 
publishing  a  series  of  documents  which,  for  the 
most  part,  should  never  have  been  published  at 
all,  and  which  have  done  equal  harm  to  Carlyle, 
to  his  wife,  and  to  Froude  himself. 

Now  that  everything  has  been  written  that  is 
likely  to  be  written  by  those  claiming  to  possess 
personal  knowledge  of  the  subject,  let  us  take 
up  the  volumes,  and  likewise  the  scattered  frag- 
ments, and  seek  to  penetrate  the  mystery  of 
the  most  ill-assorted  couple  known  to  modem 
literature. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  bring  to  light,  and  in 
regular  order,  the  external  history  of  Thomas 
Carlyle,  or  of  Jane  Baillie  Welsh,  who  married 
him.    There  is  an  extraordinary  amount  of 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  47 

rather  fanciful  gossip  about  this  marriage, 
and  about  the  three  persons  who  had  to  do 
with  it. 

Take  first  the  principal  figure,  Thomas  Car- 
lyle.  His  life  until  that  time  had  been  a  good 
deal  more  than  the  life  of  an  ordinary  country- 
man. Many  persons  represent  him  as  a  peas- 
ant; but  he  was  descended  from  the  ancient 
lords  of  a  Scottish  manor.  There  was  some- 
thing in  his  eye,  and  in  the  dominance  of  his 
nature,  that  made  his  lordly  nature  felt.  Mr. 
Froude  notes  that  Carlyle's  hand  was  very 
small  and  unusually  well  shaped.  Nor  had  his 
earliest  appearance  as  a  young  man  been  com- 
monplace, in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  parents 
were  illiterate,  so  that  his  mother  learned  to 
read  only  after  her  sons  had  gone  away  to  Edin- 
burgh, in  order  that  she  might  be  able  to  enjoy 
their  letters. 

At  that  time  in  Scotland,  as  in  Puritan  New 
England,  in  each  family  the  son  who  had  the 
most  notable  "pairts'*  was  sent  to  the  uni- 
versity that  he  might  become  a  clergyman.  If 
there  were  a  second  son,  he  became  an  advocate 
or  a  doctor  of  medicine,  while  the  sons  of  less 
distinction  seldom  went  beyond  the  parish 
school,  but  settled  down  as  farmers,  horse- 


48    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

dealers,  or  whatever  might  happen  to  come 
their  way. 

In  the  case  of  Thomas  Carlyle,  nature  marked 
liim  out  for  something  brilliant,  whatever  that 
might  be.  His  quick  sensibility,  the  way  in 
which  he  acquired  every  sort  of  learning,  his 
command  of  logic,  and,  withal,  his  swift,  unerr- 
ing gift  of  language,  made  it  certain  from  the 
very  first  that  he  must  be  sent  to  the  university 
as  soon  as  he  had  finished  school,  and  could  af- 
ford to  go. 

At  Edinburgh,  where  he  matriculated  in  his 
fourteenth  year,  he  astonished  every  one  by  the 
enormous  extent  of  his  reading,  and  by  the  firm 
hold  he  kept  upon  it.  One  hesitates  to  credit 
these  so-called  reminiscences  which  tell  how  he 
absorbed  mountains  of  Greek  and  immense 
quantities  of  political  economy  and  history  and 
sociology  and  various  forms  of  metaphysics,  as 
overy  Scotsman  is  bound  to  do.  That  he  read 
all  night  is  a  common  story  told  of  many  a  Scot- 
tish lad  at  college.  "We  may  believe,  however, 
that  Carlyle  studied  and  read  as  most  of  his 
fellow  students  did,  but  far  beyond  them  in 
extent. 

When  he  had  completed  about  half  of  his 
divinity  course,  he  assured  himself  that  he  was 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     49 

not  intended  for  the  life  of  a  clergyman.  One 
who  reads  his  mocking  sayings,  or  what  seemed 
to  be  a  clever  string  of  jeers  directed 
against  religion,  might  well  think  that  Car- 
lyle  was  throughout  his  life  an  atheist,  or 
an  agnostic.  He  confessed  to  Irving  that  he 
did  not  believe  in  the  Christian  religion,  and 
it  was  vain  to  hope  that  he  ever  would  so 
believe. 

Moreover,  Carlyle  had  done  something  which 
was  unusual  at  that  time.  He  had  taught  in 
several  local  schools;  but  presently  he  came 
back  to  Edinburgh  and  openly  made  literature 
his  profession.  It  was  a  daring  thing  to  do; 
but  Carlyle  had  unbounded  confidence  in  him- 
self— the  confidence  of  a  giant,  striding  forth 
into  a  forest,  certain  that  he  can  make  his  way 
by  sheer  strength  through  the  tangled  meshes 
and  the  knotty  branches  that  he  knows  will  meet 
him  and  try  to  beat  him  back.  Furthermore, 
he  knew  how  to  live  on  very  little;  he  was 
unmarried;  and  he  felt  a  certain  ardor  which 
beseemed  his  age  and  gifts. 

Through  the  kindness  of  friends,  he  received 
some  commissions  to  write  in  various  books  of 
reference;  and  in  1824,  when  he  was  twenty- 
nine  years  of  age,  he  published  a  translation  of 


50     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Legendre's  Geometry.  In  the  same  year  he 
published,  in  the  London  Magazine,  his  Life 
of  Schiller,  and  also  his  translation  of 
Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister.  This  successful 
attack  upon  the  London  periodicals  and  reviews 
led  to  a  certain  complication  with  the  other  two 
characters  in  this  story.  It  takes  us  to  Jane 
"Welsh,  and  also  to  Edward  Irving. 

Irving  was  three  years  older  than  Carlyle. 
The  two  men  were  friends,  and  both  of  them 
had  been  teaching  in  country  schools,  where 
both  of  them  had  come  to  know  Miss  Welsh. 
Irving 's  seniority  gave  him  a  certain  prestige 
with  the  younger  men,  and  naturally  with 
Miss  Welsh.  He  had  won  honors  at  the  uni- 
versity, and  now,  as  assistant  to  the  famous 
Dr.  Chalmers,  he  carried  his  silk  robes  in  the 
jaunty  fashion  of  one  who  has  just  ceased  to 
be  an  undergraduate.  While  studying,  he  met 
Miss  Welsh  at  Haddington,  and  there  became 
her  private  instructor. 

This  girl  was  regarded  in  her  native  town  as 
something  of  a  personage.  To  read  what  has 
been  written  of  her,  one  might  suppose  that 
she  was  almost  a  miracle  of  birth  and  breed- 
ing, and  of  intellect  as  well.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  in  the  little  town  of  Haddington  she  was 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  51 

simply  prima  inter  pares.  Her  father  was  the 
local  doctor,  and  while  she  had  a  comfortable 
home,  and  doubtless  a  chaise  at  her  disposal, 
she  was  very  far  from  the  ** opulence"  which 
Carlyle,  looking  up  at  her  from  his  lowlier  sur- 
roundings, was  accustomed  to  ascribe  to  her. 
She  was,  no  doubt,  a  very  clever  girl;  and, 
judging  from  the  portraits  taken  of  her  at 
about  this  time,  she  was  an  exceedingly  pretty 
one,  with  beautiful  eyes  and  an  abundance  of 
dark  glossy  hair. 

Even  then,  however,  Miss  Welsh  had  traits 
which  might  have  made  it  certain  that  she 
would  be  much  more  agreeable  as  a  friend  than 
as  a  wife.  She  had  become  an  intellectuelle 
quite  prematurely — at  an  age,  in  fact,  when  she 
might  better  have  been  thinking  of  other 
things  than  the  inwardness  of  her  soul,  or  the 
folly  of  religious  belief. 

Even  as  a  young  girl,  she  was  beset  by  a 
desire  to  criticize  and  to  ridicule  almost  every- 
thing and  every  one  that  she  encountered.  It 
was  only  when  she  met  with  something  that 
she  could  not  understand,  or  some  one  who 
could  do  what  she  could  not,  that  she  became 
comparatively  humble.  Unconsciously,  her 
chief  ambition  was  to  be  herself  distinguished. 


52     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

and  to  marry  some  one  who  could  be  more  dis- 
tinguished still. 

When  she  first  met  Edward  Irving,  she 
looked  up  to  him  as  her  superior  in  many  ways. 
He  was  a  striking  figure  in  her  small  world.  He 
was  known  in  Edinburgh  as  likely  to  be  a  man 
of  mark;  and,  of  course,  he  had  had  a  careful 
training  in  many  subjects  of  which  she,  as  yet, 
knew  very  little.  Therefore,  insensibly,  she  fell 
into  a  sort  of  admiration  for  Irving — an  ad- 
miration which  might  have  been  transmuted 
into  love.  Irving,  on  his  side,  was  taken  by  the 
young  girl's  beauty,  her  vivacity,  and  the  keen- 
ness of  her  intellect.  That  he  did  not  at  once 
become  her  suitor  is  probably  due  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  already  engaged  himself  to  a  Miss 
Martin,  of  whom  not  much  is  known. 

It  was  about  this  time,  however,  that  Carlyle 
became  acquainted  with  Miss  Welsh.  His 
abundant  knowledge,  his  original  and  striking 
manner  of  commenting  on  it,  his  almost  gigantic 
intellectual  power,  came  to  her  as  a  revelation. 
Her  studies  with  Irving  were  now  interwoven 
with  her  admiration  for  Carlyle. 

Since  Irving  was  a  clergyman,  and  Miss 
Welsh  had  not  the  slightest  belief  in  any  form 
of  theology,  there  was  comparatively  little  that 


THE  STOEY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  53 

they  had  in  common.  On  the  other  hand,  when 
she  saw  the  profundities  of  Carlyle,  she  at  once 
half  feared,  and  was  half  fascinated.  Let  her 
speak  to  him  on  any  subject,  and  he  would  at 
once  thunder  forth  some  striking  truth,  or  it 
might  be  some  puzzling  paradox;  but  what  he 
said  could  never  fail  to  interest  her  and  to  make 
her  think.  He  had,  too,  an  infinite  sense  of 
humor,  often  whimsical  and  shot  through  with 
sarcasm. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Miss  Welsh  was  more 
and  more  infatuated  with  the  nature  of  Car- 
lyle. If  it  was  her  conscious  wish  to  marry  a 
man  whom  she  could  reverence  as  a  master, 
where  should  she  find  him — in  Irving  or  in 
Carlyle? 

Irving  was  a  dreamer,  a  man  who,  she  came 
to  see,  was  thoroughly  one-sided,  and  whose  in- 
terests lay  in  a  different  sphere  from  hers. 
Carlyle,  on  the  other  hand,  had  already  reached 
out  beyond  the  little  Scottish  capital,  and  had 
made  his  mark  in  the  great  world  of  London, 
where  men  like  De  Quincey  and  Jeffrey  thought 
it  worth  their  while  to  run  a  tilt  with  him. 
Then,  too,  there  was  the  fascination  of  his  talk, 
in  which  Jane  Welsh  found  a  perpetual  source 
of  interest : 


54     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

The  English  have  never  had  an  artist,  except  in 
poetry;  no  musician;  no  painter.  Purcell  and 
Hogarth  are  not  exceptions,  or  only  such  as  confirm 
the  rule. 

Is  the  true  Scotchman  the  peasant  and  yeoman — 
chiefly  the  former? 

Every  living  man  is  a  visible  mystery;  he  walks 
between  two  eternities  and  two  infinitudes.  Were 
we  not  blind  as  molea  we  should  value  our  hu- 
manity at  infinity,  and  our  rank,  influence  and  so 
forth — the  trappings  of  our  humanity — at  nothing. 
Say  I  am  a  man,  and  you  say  all.  Whether  king 
or  tinker  is  a  mere  appendix. 

Understanding  is  to  reason  as  the  talent  of  a  beaver 
— which  can  build  houses,  and  uses  its  tail  for  a 
trowel — to  the  genius  of  a  prophet  and  poet.  Reason 
is  all  but  extinct  in  this  age;  it  can  never  be  alto- 
gether extinguished. 

The  devil  has  his  elect. 

Is  anything  more  wonderful  than  another,  if  you 
consider  it  maturely?  I  have  seen  no  men  rise  from 
the  dead ;  I  have  seen  some  thousands  rise  from  noth- 
ing. I  have  not  force  to  fly  into  the  sun,  but  I  have 
force  to  lift  my  hand,  which  is  equally  strange. 

Is  not  every  thought  properly  an  inspiration?  Or 
how  is  one  thing  more  inspired  than  another? 

Examine  by  logic  the  import  of  thy  life,  and  of  all 
lives.  What  is  it?  A  making  of  meal  into  manure, 
and  of  manure  into  meal.  To  the  cui  bono  there 
is  no  answer  from  logic. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  55 

In  many  ways  Jane  Welsh  found  the  differ- 
ence of  range  between  Carlyle  and  Irving.  At 
one  time,  she  asked  Irving  about  some  German 
works,  and  he  was  obliged  to  send  her  to  Car- 
lyle to  solve  her  difficulties.  Carlyle  knew  Ger- 
man almost  as  well  as  if  he  had  been  born  in 
Dresden;  and  the  full  and  almost  overflowing 
way  in  which  he  answered  her  gave  her  another 
impression  of  his  potency.  Thus  she  weighed 
the  two  men  who  might  become  her  lovers,  and 
little  by  little  she  came  to  think  of  Irving  as 
partly  shallow  and  partly  narrow-minded,  while 
Carlyle  loomed  up  more  of  a  giant  than 
before. 

It  is  not  probable  that  she  was  a  woman  who 
could  love  profoundly.  She  thought  too  much 
about  herself.  She  was  too  critical.  She  had 
too  intense  an  ambition  for  "showing  off."  I 
can  imagine  that  in  the  end  she  made  her  choice 
quite  coolly.  She  was  flattered  by  Carlyle 's 
strong  preference  for  her.  She  was  perhaps 
repelled  by  Irving 's  engagement  to  another 
woman;  yet  at  the  time  few  persons  thought 
that  she  had  chosen  well. 

Irving  had  now  gone  to  London,  and  had  be- 
come the  pastor  of  the  Caledonian  chapel  in 
Hatton  Garden.     Within  a  year,  by  the  ex- 


56     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

traordinary  power  of  his  eloquence,  which,  was 
in  a  style  peculiar  to  himself,  he  had  trans- 
formed an  obscure  little  chapel  into  one  which 
was  crowded  by  the  rich  and  fashionable.  His 
congregation  built  for  him  a  handsome  edifice 
on  Regent  Square,  and  he  became  the  leader  of 
a  new  cult,  which  looked  to  a  second  personal 
advent  of  Christ.  He  cared  nothing  for  the 
charges  of  heresy  which  were  brought  against 
him;  and  when  he  was  deposed  his  congrega- 
tion followed  him,  and  developed  a  new  Chris- 
tian order,  known  as  Irvingism. 

Jane  Welsh,  in  her  musings,  might  rightfully 
have  compared  the  two  men  and  the  future 
which  each  could  give  her.  Did  she  marry 
Irving,  she  was  certain  of  a  life  of  ease  in  Lon- 
don, and  an  association  with  men  and  women 
of  fashion  and  celebrity,  among  whom  she  could 
show  herself  to  be  the  gifted  woman  that  she 
was.  Did  she  marry  Carlyle,  she  must  go  with 
him  to  a  desolate,  wind-beaten  cottage,  far  away 
from  any  of  the  things  she  cared  for,  working 
almost  as  a  housemaid,  having  no  company  save 
that  of  her  husband,  who  was  already  a  dys- 
peptic, and  who  was  wont  to  speak  of  feeling 
as  if  a  rat  were  tearing  out  his  stomach. 

Who  would  have  said  that  in  going  with  Car- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     57 

lyle  she  had  made  the  better  choice!  Any  one 
would  have  said  it  who  knew  the  three — Irving, 
Carlyle,  and  Jane  Welsh. 

She  had  the  penetration  to  be  certain  that 
whatever  Irving  might  possess  at  present,  it 
would  be  nothing  in  comparison  to  what  Carlyle 
would  have  in  the  coming  future.  She  under- 
stood the  limitations  of  Irving,  but  to  her  keen 
mind  the  genius  of  Carlyle  was  unlimited ;  and 
she  foresaw  that,  after  he  had  toiled  and 
striven,  he  would  come  into  his  great  reward, 
which  she  would  share.  Irving  might  be  the 
leader  of  a  petty  sect,  but  Carlyle  would  be  a 
man  whose  name  must  become  known  through- 
out the  world. 

And  so,  in  1826,  she  had  made  her  choice,  and 
had  become  the  bride  of  the  rough-spoken, 
domineering  Scotsman  who  had  to  face  the 
world  with  nothing  but  his  creative  brain  and 
his  stubborn  independence.  She  had  put  aside 
all  immediate  thought  of  London  and  its  lures ; 
she  was  going  to  cast  in  her  lot  with  Carlyle 's, 
largely  as  a  matter  of  calculation,  and  believing 
that  she  had  made  the  better  choice. 

She  was  twenty-six  and  Carlyle  was  thirty- 
two  when,  after  a  brief  residence  in  Edinburgh, 
they  went  down  to  Craigenputtock.   Froude  has 


58     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

described  this  place  as  the  dreariest  spot  in  the 
British  dominions : 

The  nearest  cottage  is  more  than  a  mile  from  it ;  the 
elevation,  seven  hundred  feet  above  the  sea,  stunts  the 
trees  and  limits  the  garden  produce;  the  house  is 
gaunt  and  hungry-looking.  It  stands,  with  the  scanty 
fields  attached,  as  an  island  in  a  sea  of  morass.  The 
landscape  is  unredeemed  by  grace  or  grandeur — 
mere  undulating  hills  of  grass  and  heather,  with  peat 
bogs  in  the  hollows  between  them. 

Froude  's  grim  description  has  been  questioned- 
by  some ;  yet  the  actual  pictures  that  have  been 
drawn  of  the  place  in  later  years  make  it  look 
bare,  desolate,  and  uninviting.  Mrs.  Carlyle, 
who  owned  it  as  an  inheritance  from  her  father, 
saw  the  place  for  the  first  time  in  March,  1828. 
She  settled  there  in  May ;  but  May,  in  the  Scot- 
tish hills,  is  almost  as  repellent  as  winter.  She 
herself  shrank  from  the  adventure  which  she 
had  proposed.  It  was  her  husband's  notion, 
and  her  own,  that  they  should  live  there  in 
practical  solitude.  He  was  to  think  and  write, 
and  make  for  himself  a  beginning  of  real  fame ; 
while  she  was  to  hover  over  him  and  watch  his 
minor  comforts. 

It  seemed  to  many  of  their  friends  that  the 
project  was  quixotic  to  a  degree.    Mrs.  Car- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  59 

lyle's  delicate  health,  her  weak  chest,  and  the 
beginning  of  a  nervous  disorder,  made  them 
think  that  she  was  unfit  to  dwell  in  so  wild  and 
bleak  a  solitude.  They  felt,  too,  that  Carlyle 
was  too  much  absorbed  with  his  own  thought 
to  be  trusted  with  the  charge  of  a  high-spirited 
woman. 

However,  the  decision  had  been  made,  and 
the  newly  married  couple  went  to  Craigenput- 
tock,  with  wagons  that  carried  their  household 
goods  and  those  of  Carlyle 's  brother,  Alex- 
ander, who  lived  in  a  cottage  near  by.  These 
were  the  two  redeeming  features  of  their  lonely 
home — the  presence  of  Alexander  Carlyle,  and 
the  fact  that,  although  they  had  no  servants  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  there  were  several  farm- 
hands and  a  dairy-maid. 

Before  long  there  came  a  period  of  trouble, 
which  is  easily  explained  by  what  has  been  al- 
ready said.  Carlyle,  thinking  and  writing  some 
of  the  most  beautiful  things  that  he  ever 
thought  or  wrote,  could  not  make  allowance  for 
his  wife's  high  spirit  and  physical  weakness. 
She,  on  her  side — ^nervous,  fitful,  and  hard  to 
please — thought  herself  a  slave,  the  servant  of 
a  harsh  and  brutal  master.  She  screamed  at 
him  when  her  nerves  were  too  unstrung;  and 

IV. — 5 


60     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

then,  with  a  natural  reaction,  she  called  herself 
**a  devil  who  could  never  be  good  enough  for 
him."  But  most  of  her  letters  were  harsh  and 
filled  with  bitterness,  and,  no  doubt,  his  conduct 
to  her  was  at  times  no  better  than  her  own. 

But  it  was  at  Craigenputtock  that  he  really 
did  lay  fast  and  firm  the  road  to  fame.  His 
wife's  sharp  tongue,  and  the  gnawings  of  his 
own  dyspepsia,  were  lived  down  with  true  Scot- 
tish grimness.  It  was  here  that  he  wrote  some 
of  his  most  penetrating  and  sympathetic  essays, 
which  were  published  by  the  leading  reviews  of 
England  and  Scotland.  Here,  too,  he  began  to 
teach  his  countrymen  the  value  of  German  lit- 
erature. 

The  most  remarkable  of  his  productions  was 
that  strange  work  entitled  Sartor  Resartus 
(1834),  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  the  sub- 
lime and  the  grotesque.  The  book  quivers  and 
shakes  with  tragic  pathos,  with  inward  agonies, 
with  solemn  aspirations,  and  with  riotous 
humor. 

In  1834,  after  six  years  at  Craigenputtock, 
the  Carlyles  moved  to  London,  and  took  up  their 
home  in  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea,  a  far  from  fash- 
ionable retreat,  but  one  in  which  the  comforts 
of  life  could  be  more  readily  secured.    It  was 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     61 

there  that  Thomas  Carlyle  wrote  what  must 
seem  to  us  the  most  vivid  of  all  his  books,  the 
History  of  the  French  Revolution.  For  this 
he  had  read  and  thought  for  many  years ;  parts 
of  it  he  had  written  in  essays,  and  parts  of  it 
he  had  jotted  down  in  journals.  But  now  it 
came  forth,  as  some  one  has  said,  *  *  a  truth  clad 
in  hell-fire,**  swirling  amid  clouds  and  flames 
and  mist,  a  most  wonderful  picture  of  the  ac- 
cumulated social  and  political  falsehoods  which 
preceded  the  revolution,  and  which  were  swept 
away  by  a  nemesis  that  was  the  righteous  judg- 
ment of  God. 

Carlyle  never  wrote  so  great  a  book  as  this. 
He  had  reached  his  middle  style,  having  passed 
the  clarity  of  his  early  writings,  and  not  having 
yet  reached  the  thunderous,  strange-mouthed 
German  expletives  which  marred  his  later  work. 
In  the  French  Revolution  he  bursts  forth,  here 
and  there,  into  furious  Gallic  oaths  and  Gar- 
gantuan epithets ;  yet  this  apocalypse  of  France 
seems  more  true  than  his  hero-worshiping  of 
old  Frederick  of  Prussia,  or  even  of  English 
Cromwell. 

All  these  days  Thomas  Carlyle  lived  a  life 
which  was  partly  one  of  seclusion  and  partly 
one  of  pleasure.    At  all  times  he  and  his  "dark- 


62     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

haired  wife  had  their  own  sets,  and  mingled 
with  their  own  friends.  Jane  had  no  means  of 
discovering  just  whether  she  would  have  been 
happier  with  Irving;  for  Irving  died  while  she 
was  still  digging  potatoes  and  complaining  of 
her  lot  at  Craigenputtock. 

However  this  may  be,  the  Carlyles,  man  and 
wife,  lived  an  existence  that  was  full  of  unhap- 
piness  and  rancor.  Jane  Carlyle  became  an  in- 
valid, and  sought  to  allay  her  nervous  suffer- 
ings with  strong  tea  and  tobacco  and  morphin. 
When  a  nervous  woman  takes  to  morphin,  it  al- 
most always  means  that  she  becomes  intensely 
jealous ;  and  so  it  was  with  Jane  Carlyle. 

A  shivering,  palpitating,  fiercely  loyal  bit  of 
humanity,  she  took  it  into  her  head  that  her  hus- 
band was  infatuated  with  Lady  Ashburton,  or 
that  Lady  Ashburton  was  infatuated  with  him. 
She  took  to  spying  on  them,  and  at  times,  when 
her  nerves  were  all  a  jangle,  she  would  lie  back 
in  her  armchair  and  yell  with  paroxysms  of 
anger.  On  the  other  hand,  Carlyle,  eager  to 
enjoy  the  world,  sought  relief  from  his  house- 
hold cares,  and  sometimes  stole  away  after  a 
fashion  that  was  hardly  guileless.  He  would 
leave  false  addresses  at  his  house,  and  would 
dine  at  other  places  than  he  had  announced. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES  63 

In  1866  Jane  Carlyle  suddenly  died;  and 
somehow,  then,  the  conscience  of  Thomas  Car- 
lyle became  convinced  that  he  had  wronged 
the  woman  whom  he  had  really  loved.  His  last 
fifteen  years  were  spent  in  wretchedness  and 
despair.  He  felt  that  he  had  committed  the 
unpardonable  sin.  He  recalled  with  anguish 
every  moment  of  their  early  life  at  Craigenput- 
tock — how  she  had  toiled  for  him,  and  waited 
upon  him,  and  made  herself  a  slave;  and  how, 
later,  she  had  given  herself  up  entirely  to  him, 
while  he  had  thoughtlessly  received  the  sacri- 
fice, and  trampled  on  it  as  on  a  bed  of 
flowers. 

Of  course,  in  all  this  he  was  intensely  morbid, 
and  the  diary  which  he  wrote  was  no  more 
sane  and  wholesome  than  the  screamings  with 
which  his  wife  had  horrified  her  friends.  But 
when  he  had  grown  to  be  a  very  old  man,  he 
came  to  feel  that  this  was  all  a  sort  of  penance, 
and  that  the  selfishness  of  his  past  must  be 
expiated  in  the  future.  Therefore,  he  gave  his 
diary  to  his  friend,  the  historian,  Froude,  and 
urged  him  to  publish  the  letters  and  memorials 
of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle.  Mr.  Froude,  with  an 
eye  to  the  reading  world,  readily  did  so,  fur- 
nishing them  with  abundant  foot-notes,  which 


64    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

made  Carlyle  appear  to  the  world  as  more  or 
less  of  a  monster. 

First,  there  was  set  forth  the  almost  con- 
tinnal  unhappiness  of  the  pair.  In  the  second 
place,  by  hint,  by  innuendo,  and  sometimes  by 
explicit  statement,  there  were  given  reasons  to 
show  why  Carlyle  made  his  wife  unhappy.  Of 
course,  his  gnawing  dyspepsia,  which  she 
strove  with  all  her  might  to  drive  away,  was 
one  of  the  first  and  greatest  causes.  But  again 
another  cause  of  discontent  was  stated  in  the 
implication  that  Carlyle,  in  his  bursts  of  tem- 
per, actually  abused  his  wife.  In  one  passage 
there  is  a  hint  that  certain  blue  marks  upon 
her  arm  were  bruises,  the  result  of  blows. 

Most  remarkable  of  all  these  accusations  is 
that  which  has  to  do  with  the  relations  of  Car- 
lyle and  Lady  Ashburton.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  Jane  Carlyle  disliked  this  brilliant  woman, 
and  came  to  have  dark  suspicions  concerning 
her.  At  first,  it  was  only  a  sort  of  social  jeal- 
ousy. Lady  Ashburton  was  quite  as  clever  a 
talker  as  Mrs.  Carlyle,  and  she  had  a  prestige 
which  brought  her  more  admiration. 

Then,  by  degrees,  as  Jane  Carlyle  *s  mind 
began  to  wane,  she  transferred  her  jealousy 
to  her  husband  himself.    She  hated  to  be  out- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     65 

shone,  and  now,  in  some  misguided  fashion,  it 
came  into  her  head  that  Carlyle  had  surren- 
dered to  Lady  Ashburton  his  own  attention  to 
his  wife,  and  had  fallen  in  love  with  her  brilliant 
rival. 

On  one  occasion,  she  declared  that  Lady  Ash- 
burton had  thrown  herself  at  Carlyle 's  feet,  but 
that  Carlyle  had  acted  like  a  man  of  honor, 
while  Lord  Ashburton,  knowing  all  the  facts, 
had  passed  them  over,  and  had  retained  his 
friendship  with  Carlyle. 

Now,  when  Froude  came  to  write  My  Rela- 
tions with  Carlyle,  there  were  those  who  were 
very  eager  to  furnish  him  with  every  sort  of 
gossip.  The  greatest  source  of  scandal  upon 
which  he  drew  was  a  woman  named  Geraldine 
Jewsbury,  a  curious  neurotic  creature,  who  had 
seen  much  of  the  late  Mrs.  Carlyle,  but  who 
had  an  almost  morbid  love  of  offensive  tattle. 
Froude  describes  himself  as  a  witness  for  six 
years,  at  Cheyne  Row,  "of  the  enactment  of  a 
tragedy  as  stem  and  real  as  the  story  of 
CEdipus."    According  to  his  own  account: 

I  stood  by,  consenting  to  the  slow  martyrdom  of  a 
woman  whom  I  have  described  as  bright  and  sparkling 
and  tender,  and  I  uttered  no  word  of  remonstrance. 
I  saw  her  involved  in  a  perpetual  blizzard,  and  did 
nothing  to  shelter  her. 


66     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

But  it  is  not  upon  his  own  observations  that 
Froude  relies  for  his  most  sinister  evidence 
against  his  friend.  To  him  comes  Miss  Jews- 
bury  with  a  lengthy  tale  to  tell.  It  is  well  to 
know  what  Mrs.  Carlyle  thought  of  this  lady. 
She  wrote : 

It  is  her  besetting  sin,  and  her  trade  of  novelist  has 
a^ravated  it — the  desire  of  feeling  and  producing 
violent  emotions.  .  .  .  Geraldine  has  one  besetting 
weakness ;  she  is  never  happy  unless  she  has  a  grande 
passion  on  hand. 

There  were  strange  manifestations  on  the 
part  of  Miss  Jewsbury  toward  Mrs.  Carlyle. 
At  one  time,  when  Mrs.  Carlyle  had  shown 
some  preference  for  another  woman,  it  led  to 
a  wild  outburst  of  what  Miss  Jewsbury  herself 
called  "tiger  jealousy."  There  are  many  other 
instances  of  violent  emotions  in  her  letters  to 
Mrs.  Carlyle.  They  are  often  highly  charged 
and  erotic.  It  is  unusual  for  a  woman  of  thirty- 
two  to  write  to  a  woman  friend,  who  is  forty- 
three  years  of  age,  in  these  words,  which  Miss 
Jewsbury  used  in  writing  to  Mrs.  Carlyle : 

You  are  never  out  of  my  thoughts  one  hour  to- 
gether. I  think  of  you  much  more  than  if  you  were 
my  lover.  I  cannot  express  my  feelings,  even  to  you 
— vague,  undefined  yearnings  to  be  yours  in  some  way. 


TJEE  STORY  OF  THE  CARLYLES     67 

Mrs.  Carlyle  was  accustomed,  in  private,  to 
speak  of  Miss  Jewsbury  as  "Miss  Gooseberry,'* 
while  Carlyle  himself  said  that  she  was  simply 
**a  flimsy  tatter  of  a  creature."  But  it  is  on 
the  testimony  of  this  one  woman,  who  was  so 
morbid  and  excitable,  that  the  most  serious  ac- 
cusations against  Carlyle  rest.  She  knew  that 
Froude  was  writing  a  volume  about  Mrs.  Car- 
lyle, and  she  rushed  to  him,  eager  to  furnish 
any  narratives,  however  strange,  improbable, 
or  salacious  they  might  be. 

Thus  she  is  the  sponsor  of  the  Ashburton 
story,  in  which  there  is  nothing  whatsoever. 
Some  of  the  letters  which  Lady  Ashburton 
wrote  Carlyle  have  been  destroyed,  but  not  be- 
fore her  husband  had  perused  them.  Another 
set  of  letters  had  never  been  read  by  Lord  Ash- 
burton at  all,  and  they  are  still  preserved — 
friendly,  harmless,  usual  letters.  Lord  Ashbur- 
ton always  invited  Carlyle  to  his  house,  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  Scottish 
philosopher  wronged  him. 

There  is  much  more  to  be  said  about  the 
charge  that  Mrs.  Carlyle  suffered  from  personal 
abuse ;  yet  when  we  examine  the  facts,  the  evi- 
dence resolves  itself  into  practically  nothing. 
That,  in  his  self-absorption,  he  allowed  her  to 


68     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

do  household  work,  and  wait  upon  him  like  a 
servant,  in  the  dreary  hovel  of  Craigenputtock, 
may  well  be  true.  She  had  married  him  with 
just  that  hope — that  he  would,  by  his  pen  and 
brain,  become  a  genius  whom  all  the  world 
should  know.  That  she  grew  nervous,  and  that 
he  became  dyspeptic,  was  only  what  might  have 
been  expected ;  that  her  tongue  was  sharp,  and 
that  he  was  often  rough — this  is  no  strange 
thing.  Mr.  Froude  hints  that  he  actually  struck 
her,  but  there  is  no  evidence  of  this. 

The  only  other  charge  that  has  been  made 
against  him  is  one  that  has  been  whispered 
about  in  nooks  and  corners,  and  was  spoken  of 
quite  frankly  by  the  imaginative  Geraldine. 
Briefly  stated,  it  is  to  the  effect  that  Carlyle^s 
constitution  was  such  that  he  should  never  have 
married,  and  that  much  of  his  wife's  unhappi- 
ness,  in  her  early  years,  came  from  this  source, 
and  from  her  childlessness.  It  is  not  well  to 
say  much  on  this  head ;  for  the  evidence  all  rests 
upon  the  ** tigerish"  Geraldine  Jewsbury. 

It  seems  to  me  that  a  single  letter,  written  by 
Jane  Carlyle  at  the  end  of  her  first  twelvemonth 
at  Craigenputtock,  during  a  brief  absence  from 
home,  disproves  this  theory,  and  shows  that  in 
the  early  years  of  their  married  life  her  heart 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  CAELYLES  69 

overflowed  toward  a  man  who  must  have  heen 
a  manly,  loving  lover.  She  calls  him  by  the 
name  by  which  he  called  her — a  homely  Scot- 
tish name. 

Goody,  Goody,  dear  Goody: 

You  said  you  would  weary,  and  I  do  hope  in  my 
heart  you  are  wearying.  It  will  be  so  sweet  to  make 
it  all  up  to  you  in  kisses  when  I  return.  You  will 
take  me  and  hear  all  my  bits  of  experiences,  and  your 
heart  will  beat  when  you  find  how  I  have  longed  to 
return  to  you.  Darling,  dearest,  loveliest,  the  Lord 
bless  you !  I  think  of  you  every  hour,  every  moment. 
I  love  you  and  admire  you,  like — like  anything.  Oh, 
if  I  was  there,  I  could  put  my  arms  so  close  about 
your  neck,  and  hush  you  into  the  softest  sleep  you 
have  had  since  I  went  away.  Good  night.  Dream 
of  me.    I  am  ever  Your  own  Goody. 

It  seems  most  fitting  to  remember  Thomas 
Carlyle  as  a  man  of  strength,  of  honor,  and  of 
intellect;  and  his  wife  as  one  who  was  sorely 
tried,  but  who  came  out  of  her  suffering  into 
the  arms  of  death,  purified  and  calm  and  worthy 
to  be  remembered  by  her  husband's  side. 


f 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS 


f 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS 

VICTOR  HUGO,  after  all  criticisms  have 
been  made,  stands  as  a  literary  colossus. 
He  had  imaginative  power  which  makes  his 
finest  passages  fairly  crash  upon  the  reader's  |P 
brain  like  blasting  thunderbolts.  His  novels, 
even  when  translated,  are  read  and  reread  by 
people  of  every  degree  of  education.  There  is 
something  vast,  something  almost  Titanic, 
about  the  grandeur  and  gorgeousness  of  his 
fancy.  His  prose  resembles  the  sonorous  blare 
of  an  immense  military  band.  Readers  of  Eng- 
lish care  less  for  his  poetry;  yet  in  his  verse 
one  can  find  another  phase  of  his  intellect.  He 
could  write  charmingly,  in  exquisite  cadences, 
poems  for  lovers  and  for  little  children.  His 
gifts  were  varied,  and  he  knew  thoroughly  the 
life  and  thought  of  his  own  countrymen;  and, 
therefore,  in  his  later  days  he  was  almost  dei- 
fied by  them. 

At  the  same  time,  there  were  defects  in  his  in- 
tellect and  character  which  are  perceptible  in 

78 


74     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTOBY 

what  he  wrote,  as  well  as  in  what  he  did.  He 
had  the  Gallic  wit  in  great  measure,  but  he  was 
absolutely  devoid  of  any  sense  of  humor.  This 
is  why,  in  both  his  prose  and  his  poetry,  his 
most  tremendous  pages  often  come  perilously 
near  to  bombast;  and  this  is  why,  again,  as  a 
man,  his  vanity  was  almost  as  great  as  his 
genius.  He  had  good  reason  to  be  vain,  and  yet, 
if  he  had  possessed  a  gleam  of  humor,  he  would 
never  have  allowed  his  egoism  to  make  him  ar- 
rogant. As  it  was,  he  felt  himself  exalted  above 
other  mortals.  Whatever  he  did  or  said  or 
wrote  was  right  because  he  did  it  or  said  it  or 
wrote  it. 

This  often  showed  itself  in  rather  whimsical 
ways.  Thus,  after  he  had  published  the  first 
edition  of  his  novel.  The  Man  Who  Laughs,  an 
English  gentleman  called  upon  him,  and,  after 
some  courteous  compliments,  suggested  that  in 
subsequent  editions  the  name  of  an  English  peer 
who  figures  in  the  book  should  be  changed  from 
Tom  Jim-Jack. 

**For,"  said  the  Englishman,  <*Tom  Jim- Jack 
is  a  name  that  could  not  possibly  belong  to  an 
English  noble,  or,  indeed,  to  any  Englishman. 
The  presence  of  it  in  your  powerful  story  makes 
it  seem  to  English  readers  a  little  grotesque.*' 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       75 

Victor  Hmgo  ^rew  himself  up  with  an  air  of 
high  disdain. 

**Who  are  yon?'*  asked  he. 

**I  am  an  Englishman,"  was  the  answer, 
**and  naturally  I  know  what  names  are  possible 
in  English." 

Hugo  drew  himself  up  still  higher,  and  on 
his  face  there  was  a  smile  of  utter  contempt. 

"Yes,"  said  he.  "You  are  an  Englishman; 
but  I — I  am  Victor  Hugo." 

In  another  book  Hugo  had  spoken  of  the 
Scottish  bagpipes  as  "bugpipes."  This  gave 
some  offense  to  his  Scottish  admirers.  A  great 
many  persons  told  him  that  the  word  was  "bag- 
pipes," and  not  "bugpipes."  But  he  replied 
with  irritable  obstinacy: 

"I  am  Victor  Hugo;  and  if  I  choose  to  write 
it  'bugpipes,'  it  is  *bugpipes.'  It  is  anything 
that  I  prefer  to  make  it.  It  is  so,  because  I  call 
it  sol" 

So,  Victor  Hugo  became  a  violent  republican, 
because  he  did  not  wish  France  to  be  an  em- 
pire or  a  kingdom,  in  which  an  emperor  or  a 
king  would  be  his  superior  in  rank.  He  always 
spoke  of  Napoleon  III  as  "M.  Bonaparte."  He 
refused  to  call  upon  the  gentle-mannered  Em- 
peror of  Brazil,  because  he  was  an  emperor; 

IV.— 6 


76     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

although  Dom  Pedro  expressed  an  earnest  de- 
sire to  meet  the  poet. 

When  the  German  army  was  besieging  Paris, 
Hugo  proposed  to  fight  a  duel  with  the  King  of 
Prussia,  and  to  have  the  result  of  it  settle  the 
yfSLT'j  ''for,"  said  he,  "the  King  of  Prussia  is 
a  great  king,  but  I  am  Victor  Hugo,  the  great 
poet.    We  are,  therefore,  equal. ' ' 

In  spite,  however,  of  his  ardent  republican- 
ism, he  was  very  fond  of  speaking  of  his  own 
noble  descent.  Again  and  again  he  styled  him- 
self "a  peer  of  France;"  and  he  and  his  family 
made  frequent  allusions  to  the  knights  and 
bishops  and  counselors  of  state  with  whom  he 
claimed  an  ancestral  relation.  This  was  more 
than  inconsistent.  It  was  somewhat  ludicrous ; 
because  Victor  Hugo's  ancestry  was  by  no 
means  noble.  The  Hugos  of  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries  were  not  in  any  way  related 
to  the  poet 's  family,  which  was  eminently  hon- 
est and  respectable,  but  by  no  means  one  of 
distinction.  His  grandfather  was  a  carpenter. 
One  of  his  aunts  was  the  wife  of  a  baker,  an- 
other of  a  barber,  while  the  third  earned  her 
living  as  a  provincial  dressmaker. 

If  the  poet  had  been  less  vain  and  more  sin- 
cerely democratic,  he  would  have  been  proud  to 


THE  STOEY  OF  THE  HUGOS       77 

think  that  he  sprang  from  good,  sound,  sturdy 
stock,  and  would  have  laughed  at  titles.  As  it 
was,  he  jeered  at  all  pretensions  of  rank  in 
other  men,  while  he  claimed  for  himself  distinc- 
tions that  were  not  really  his.  His  father  was 
a  soldier  who  rose  from  the  ranks  until,  under 
Napoleon,  he  reached  the  grade  of  general. 
His  mother  was  the  daughter  of  a  ship  owner 
in  Nantes. 

Victor  Hugo  was  bom  in  February,  1802, 
during  the  Napoleonic  wars,  and  his  early  years 
were  spent  among  the  camps  and  within  the 
sound  of  the  cannon-thunder.  It  was  fitting 
that  he  should  have  been  bom  and  reared  in 
an  age  of  upheaval,  revolt,  and  battle.  He  was 
essentially  the  laureate  of  revolt;  and  in  some 
of  his  novels — as  in  Ninety-Three — the  drum 
and  the  trumpet  roll  and  ring  through  every 
chapter. 

The  present  paper  has,  of  course,  nothing  to 
do  with  Hugo  *s  public  life ;  yet  it  is  necessary 
to  remember  the  complicated  nature  of  the  man 
— all  his  power,  all  his  sweetness  of  disposition, 
and  likewise  all  his  vanity  and  his  eccentricities. 
We  must  remember,  also,  that  he  was  French, 
so  that  his  story  may  be  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  the  French  character. 


78     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  he  was  domiciled  in 
Paris,  and  though  still  a  schoolboj  and  destined 
for  the  study  of  law,  he  dreamed  only  of  poetry 
and  of  literature.  He  received  honorable  men- 
tion from  the  French  Academy  in  1817,  and  in 
the  following  year  took  prizes  in  a  poetical 
competition.  At  seventeen  he  began  the  pub- 
lication of  a  literary  journal,  which  survived 
until  1821.  His  astonishing  energy  became  evi- 
dent in  the  many  publications  which  he  put 
forth  in  these  boyish  days.  He  began  to  be- 
come known.  Although  poetry,  then  as  now, 
was  not  very  profitable  even  when  it  was  ad- 
mired, one  of  his  slender  volumes  brought  him 
the  sum  of  seven  hundred  francs,  which  seemed 
to  him  not  only  a  fortune  in  itself,  but  the  fore- 
runner of  still  greater  prosperity. 

It  was  at  this  time,  while  still  only  twenty 
years  of  age,  that  he  met  a  young  girl  of  eigh- 
teen with  whom  he  fell  rather  tempestuously 
in  love.  Her  name  was  Adele  Foucher,  and  she 
was  the  daughter  of  a  clerk  in  the  War  Office. 
"When  one  is  very  young  and  also  a  poet,  it 
takes  very  little  to  feed  the  flame  of  passion. 
Victor  Hugo  was  often  a  guest  at  the  apart- 
ments of  M.  Foucher,  where  he  was  received 
by  that  gentleman  and  his  family.    French  eti- 


THE  STOEY  OF  THE  HUGOS       79 

quette,  of  course,  forbade  any  direct  communi- 
cation between  the  visitor  and  Adele.  She  was 
still  a  very  young  girl,  and  was  supposed  to 
take  no  share  in  the  conversation.  Therefore, 
while  the  others  talked,  she  sat  demurely  by  the 
fireside  and  sewed. 

Her  dark  eyes  and  abundant  hair,  her  grace 
of  manner,  and  the  picture  which  she  made  as 
the  firelight  played  about  her,  kindled  a  flame 
in  the  susceptible  heart  of  Victor  Hugo. 
Though  he  could  not  speak  to  her,  he  at  least 
could  look  at  her;  and,  before  long,  his  share 
in  the  conversation  was  very  slight.  This  was 
set  down,  at  first,  to  his  absent-mindedness; 
but  looks  can  be  as  eloquent  as  spoken  words. 
Mme.  Foucher,  with  a  woman's  keen  intelli- 
gence, noted  the  adoring  gaze  of  Victor  Hugo 
as  he  silently  watched  her  daughter.  The 
young  Adele  herself  was  no  less  intuitive  than 
her  mother.  It  was  very  well  understood,  in 
the  course  of  a  few  months,  that  Victor  Hugo 
was  in  love  with  Adele  Foucher. 

Her  father  and  mother  took  counsel  about  the 
matter,  and  Hugo  himself,  in  a  burst  of  lyrical 
eloquence,  confessed  that  he  adored  Adele  and 
wished  to  marry  her.  Her  parents  naturally 
objected.    The  girl  was  but  a  child.    She  had 


80     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

no  dowry,  nor  had  Victor  Hugo  any  settled  in- 
come. They  were  not  to  think  of  marriage. 
But  when  did  a  common-sense  decision,  such  as 
this,  ever  separate  a  man  and  a  woman  who 
have  felt  the  thrill  of  first  love?  Victor  Hugo 
was  insistent.  With  his  supreme  self-confi- 
dence, he  declared  that  he  was  bound  to  be 
successful,  and  that  in  a  very  short  time  he 
would  be  illustrious.  Adele,  on  her  side,  cre- 
ated ''an  atmosphere"  at  home  by  weeping 
frequently,  and  by  going  about  with  hollow 
eyes  and  wistful  looks. 

The  Foucher  family  removed  from  Paris  to 
a  country  town.  Victor  Hugo  immediately  fol- 
lowed them.  Fortunately  for  him,  his  poems 
had  attracted  the  attention  of  Louis  XVIII, 
who  was  flattered  by  some  of  the  verses.  He 
sent  Hugo  five  hundred  francs  for  an  ode,  and 
soon  afterward  settled  upon  him  a  pension  of 
a  thousand  francs.  Here  at  least  was  an  in- 
come— a  very  small  one,  to  be  sure,  but  still  an 
income.  Perhaps  Adele 's  father  was  impressed 
not  so  much  by  the  actual  money  as  by  the 
evidence  of  the  royal  favor.  At  any  rate,  he 
withdrew  his  opposition,  and  the  two  young 
people  were  married  in  October,  1822 — both  of 
them  being  under  age,  unformed,  and  immature. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       81 

Their  story  is  another  warning  against  too 
early  marriage.  It  is  true  that  they  lived  to- 
gether until  Mme.  Hugo's  death — a  married 
life  of  forty-six  years — ^yet  their  story  presents 
phases  which  would  have  made  this  impossible 
had  they  not  been  French. 

For  a  time,  Hugo  devoted  all  his  energies  to 
work.  The  record  of  his  steady  upward  prog- 
ress is  a  part  of  the  history  of  literature,  and 
need  not  be  repeated  here.  The  poet  and  his 
wife  were  soon  able  to  leave  the  latter 's  family 
abode,  and  to  set  up  their  own  household  god 
in  a  home  which  was  their  own.  Around  them 
there  were  gathered,  in  a  sort  of  salon,  all  the 
best-known  writers  of  the  day — dramatists, 
critics,  poets,  and  romancers.  The  Hugos  knew 
everybody. 

Unfortunately,  one  of  their  visitors  cast  into 
their  new  life  a  drop  of  corroding  bitterness. 
This  intruder  was  Charles  Augustin  Sainte- 
Beuve,  a  man  two  years  younger  than  Victor 
Hugo,  and  one  who  blended  learning,  imagina- 
tion, and  a  gift  of  critical  analysis.  Sainte- 
Beuve  is  to-day  best  remembered  as  a  critic, 
and  he  was  perhaps  the  greatest  critic  ever 
known  in  France.  But  in  1830  he  was 
a  slender,   insinuating  youth  who  cultivated 


82     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

a  gift  for  sensuous  and  somewhat  morbid 
poetry. 

He  had  won  Victor  Hugo's  friendship  by 
writing  an  enthusiastic  notice  of  Hugo's  dra- 
matic works.  Hugo,  in  turn,  styled  Sainte- 
Beuve  "an  eagle,"  *'a  blazing  star,"  and  paid 
him  other  compliments  no  less  gorgeous  and 
Hugoesque.  But  in  truth,  if  Sainte-Beuve  fre- 
quented the  Hugo  salon,  it  was  less  because  of 
his  admiration  for  the  poet  than  from  his  de- 
sire to  win  the  love  of  the  poet's  wife. 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  say  how  far  he  at- 
tracted the  serious  attention  of  Adele  Hugo. 
Sainte-Beuve  represents  a  curious  type,  which 
is  far  more  common  in  France  and  Italy  than  in 
the  countries  of  the  north.  Human  nature  is 
not  very  different  in  cultivated  circles  any- 
where. Man  loves,  and  seeks  to  win  the  object 
of  his  love ;  or,  as  the  old  English  proverb  has 
it: 

It's  a  man's  part  to  try, 
And  a  woman's  to  deny. 

But  only  in  the  Latin  countries  do  men  who 
have  tried  make  their  attempts  public,  and  seek 
to  produce  an  impression  that  they  have  been 
successful,  and  that  the  woman  has  not  denied. 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       83 

This  sort  of  man,  in  English-speaking  lands, 
is  set  down  simply  as  a  cad,  and  is  excluded 
from  people's  houses;  but  in  some  other  coun- 
tries the  thing  is  regarded  with  a  certain 
amount  of  toleration.  We  see  it  in  the  two 
books  written  respectively  by  Alfred  de  Musset 
and  George  Sand.  "We  have  seen  it  still  later 
in  our  own  times,  in  that  strange  and  half- 
repulsive  story  in  which  the  Italian  novelist 
and  poet,  Gabriele  d'Annunzio,  under  a  very 
thin  disguise,  revealed  his  relations  with  the 
famous  actress,  Eleanora  Duse.  Anglo-Saxons 
thrust  such  books  aside  with  a  feeling  of  dis- 
gust for  the  man  who  could  so  betray  a  sacred 
confidence  and  perhaps  exaggerate  a  simple  in- 
discretion into  actual  guilt.  But  it  is  not  so  in 
France  and  Italy.  And  this  is  precisely  what 
Sainte-Beuve  attempted. 

Dr.  George  McLean  Harper,  in  his  lately  pub- 
lished study  of  Sainte-Beuve,  has  summed  the 
matter  up  admirably,  in  speaking  of  The  Book 
of  Love: 

He  had  the  vein  of  emotional  self-disclosure,  the 
vein  of  romantic  or  sentimental  confession.  This 
last  was  not  a  rich  lode,  and  so  he  was  at  pains  to 
charge  it  secretly  with  ore  which  he  exhumed  gloat- 
ingly, but  which  was  really  base  metal.  The  impulse 
that  led  him  along  this  false  route  was  partly  am- 


84     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

bition,  partly  sensuality.  Many  a  worse  man  would 
have  been  restrained  by  self-respect  and  good  taste. 
And  no  man  with  a  sense  of  honor  would  have  per- 
mitted The  Book  of  Love  to  see  the  light — a  small 
collection  of  verses  recording  his  passion  for  Mme. 
Hugo,  and  designed  to  implicate  her. 

He  left  two  hundred  and  five  printed  copies  of 
this  book  to  be  distributed  after  his  death.  A  virulent 
enemy  of  Sainte-Beuve  was  not  too  expressive  when  he 
declared  that  its  purpose  was  *'to  leave  on  the  life 
of  this  woman  the  gleaming  and  slimy  trace  which  the 
passage  of  a  snail  leaves  on  a  rose."  Abominable  in 
either  case,  whether  or  not  the  implication  was  un- 
founded, Sainte-Beuve 's  numerous  innuendoes  in  re- 
gard to  Mme.  Hugo  are  an  indelible  stain  on  his 
memory,  and  his  infamy  not  only  cost  him  his  most 
precious  friendships,  but  crippled  him  in  every  high 
endeavor. 

How  monstrous  was  this  violation  of  both 
friendship  and  love  may  be  seen  in  the  follow- 
ing quotation  from  his  writings : 

In  that  inevitable  hour,  when  the  gloomy  tempest 
and  the  jealous  gulf  shall  roll  over  our  heads,  a  sealed 
bottle,  belched  forth  from  the  abyss,  will  render  im- 
mortal our  two  names,  their  close  alliance,  and  our 
double  memory  aspiring  after  union. 

Whether  or  not  Mme.  Hugo's  relations  with 
Sainte-Beuve  justified  the  latter  even  in  think- 
ing such  thoughts  as  these,  one  need  not  inquire 
too  minutely.    Evidently,  though,  Victor  Hugo 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       85 

could  no  longer  be  the  friend  of  the  man  who 
almost  openly  boasted  that  he  had  dishonored 
him.  There  exist  some  sharp  letters  which 
passed  between  Hugo  and  Sainte-Beuve.  Their 
intimacy  was  ended. 

But  there  was  something  more  serious  than 
this.  Sainte-Beuve  had  in  fact  succeeded  in 
leaving  a  taint  upon  the  name  of  Victor  Hugo 's 
wife.  That  Hugo  did  not  repudiate  her  makes 
it  fairly  plain  that  she  was  innocent ;  yet  a  high- 
spirited,  sensitive  soul  like  Hugo's  could  never 
forget  that  in  the  world's  eye  she  was  com- 
promised. The  two  still  lived  together  as  be- 
fore; but  now  the  poet  felt  himself  released 
from  the  strict  obligations  of  the  marriage- 
bond. 

It  may  perhaps  be  doubted  whether  he  would 
in  any  case  have  remained  faithful  all  his  life. 
He  was,  as  Mr.  H.  W.  Wack  well  says,  **a  man 
of  powerful  sensations,  physically  as  well  as 
mentally.  Hugo  pursued  every  opportunity  for 
new  work,  new  sensations,  fresh  emotion.  He 
desired  to  absorb  as  much  on  life's  eager  for- 
ward way  as  his  great  nature  craved.  His 
range  in  all  things — omental,  physical,  and 
spiritual — ^was  so  far  beyond  the  ordinary  that 
the  gage  of  average  cannot  be  applied  to  him. 


86     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

The  cavil  of  the  moralist  did  not  disturb  him. ' ' 
Hence,  it  is  not  improbable  that  Victor  Hugo 
might  have  broken  through  the  bonds  of  marital 
fidelity,  even  had  Sainte-Beuve  never  written 
his  abnormal  poems ;  but  certainly  these  poems 
hastened  a  result  which  may  or  may  not  have 
been  otherwise  inevitable.  Hugo  no  longer 
turned  wholly  to  the  dark-haired,  dark-eyed 
Adele  as  summing  up  for  him  the  whole  of 
womanhood.  A  veil  was  drawn,  as  it  were,  from 
before  his  eyes,  and  he  looked  on  other  women 
and  found  them  beautiful. 

It  was  in  1833,  soon  after  Hugo^s  play  "Lu- 
crece  Borgia'*  had  been  accepted  for  produc- 
tion, that  a  lady  called  one  morning  at  Hugo's 
house  in  the  Place  Royale.  She  was  then  be- 
tween twenty  and  thirty  years  of  age,  slight  of 
figure,  winsome  in  her  bearing,  and  one  who 
knew  the  arts  which  appeal  to  men.  For  she 
was  no  inexperienced  ingenue.  The  name  upon 
her  visiting-card  was  *  *  Mme.  Drouet ' ' ;  and  by 
this  name  she  had  been  known  in  Paris  as  a 
clever  and  somewhat  gifted  actress.  Theophile 
Gautier,  whose  cult  was  the  worship  of  physical 
beauty,  wrote  in  almost  lyric  prose  of  her  se- 
ductive charm. 
At  nineteen,  after  she  had  been  cast  upon 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS        87 

the  world,  dowered  with  that  terrible  combina- 
tion, poverty  and  beauty,  she  had  lived  openly 
with  a  sculptor  named  Pradier.  This  has  a 
certain  importance  in  the  history  of  French  art. 
Pradier  had  received  a  coromission  to  execute 
a  statue  representing  Strasburg — the  statue 
which  stands  to-day  in  the  Place  de  la  Con- 
corde, and  which  patriotic  Frenchmen  and 
Frenchwomen  drape  in  mourning  and  half  bury 
in  immortelles,  in  memory  of  that  city  of  Al- 
sace which  so  long  was  French,  but  which  to-day 
is  German — one  of  Germany's  great  prizes 
taken  in  the  war  of  1870. 

Five  years  before  her  meeting  with  Hugo, 
Pradier  had  rather  brutally  severed  his  con- 
nection with  her,  and  she  had  accepted  the  pro- 
tection of  a  Russian  nobleman.  At  this  time 
she  was  known  by  her  real  name — Julienne 
Josephine  Gauvin;  but  having  gone  upon  the 
stage,  she  assumed  the  appellation  by  which 
she  was  thereafter  known,  that  of  Juliette 
Drouet. 

Her  visit  to  Hugo  was  for  the  purpose  of 
asking  him  to  secure  for  her  a  part  in  his  forth- 
coming play.  The  dramatist  was  willing,  but 
unfortunately  all  the  major  characters  had  been 
provided  for,  and  he  was  able  to  offer  her  only 


88     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

the  minor  one  of  the  Princesse  Negroni.  The 
charming  deference  with  which  she  accepted  the 
offered  part  attracted  Hugo's  attention.  Such 
amiability  is  very  rare  in  actresses  who  have 
had  engagements  at  the  best  theaters.  He  re- 
solved to  see  her  again ;  and  he  did  so,  time  after 
time,  until  he  was  thoroughly  captivated  by  her. 

She  knew  her  value,  and  as  yet  was  by  no 
means  infatuated  with  him.  At  first  he  was 
to  her  simply  a  means  of  getting  on  in  her 
profession — simply  another  influential  ac- 
quaintance. Yet  she  brought  to  bear  upon  him 
the  arts  at  her  command,  her  beauty  and  her 
sympathy,  and,  last  of  all,  her  passionate 
abandonment. 

Hugo  was  overwhelmed  by  her.  He  found 
that  she  was  in  debt,  and  he  managed  to  see 
that  her  debts  were  paid.  He  secured  her 
other  engagements  at  the  theater,  though  she 
was  less  successful  as  an  actress  after  she  knew 
him.  There  came,  for  a  time,  a  short  break 
in  their  relations;  for,  partly  out  of  need,  she 
returned  to  her  Russian  nobleman,  or  at  least 
admitted  him  to  a  menage  a  trois.  Hugo  un- 
derwent for  a  second  time  a  great  disillusion- 
ment. Nevertheless,  he  was  not  too  proud  to 
return  to  her  and  to  beg  her  not  to  be  unf  aith- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       89 

ful  any  more.  Touched  by  his  tears,  and  per- 
haps foreseeing  his  future  fame,  she  gave  her 
promise,  and  she  kept  it  until  her  death,  nearly 
half  a  century  later. 

Perhaps  because  she  had  deceived  him  once^ 
Hugo  never  completely  lost  his  prudence  in  his 
association  with  her.  He  was  by  no  means 
lavish  with  money,  and  he  installed  her  in  a 
rather  simple  apartment  only  a  short  distance 
from  his  own  home.  He  gave  her  an  allowance 
that  was  relatively  small,  though  later  he  pro- 
vided for  her  amply  in  his  will.  But  it  was 
to  her  that  he  brought  all  his  confidences,  to 
her  he  entrusted  all  his  interests.  She  became 
to  him,  thenceforth,  much  more  than  she  ap- 
peared to  the  world  at  large;  for  she  was  his 
friend,  and,  as  he  said,  his  inspiration. 

The  fact  of  their  intimate  connection  became 
gradually  known  through  Paris.  It  was  known 
€ven  to  Mme.  Hugo ;  but  she,  remembering  the 
affair  of  Sainte-Beuve,  or  knowing  how  dif- 
ficult it  is  to  check  the  will  of  a  man  like  Hugo, 
made  no  sign,  and  even  received  Juliette 
Drouet  in  her  own  house  and  visited  her  in 
turn.  When  the  poet's  sons  grew  up  to  man- 
hood, they,  too,  spent  many  hours  with  their 
father  in  the  little  salon  of  the  former  actress. 


90     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

It  was  a  strange  and,  to  an  Anglo-Saxon  mind, 
an  almost  impossible  position ;  yet  France  for- 
gives much  to  genius,  and  in  time  no  one 
thought  of  commenting  on  Hugo's  manner  of 
life. 

In  1851,  when  Napoleon  HI  seized  upon  the 
government,  and  when  Hugo  was  in  danger 
of  arrest,  she  assisted  him  to  escape  in  disguise, 
and  with  a  forged  passport,  across  the  Belgian 
frontier.  During  his  long  exile  in  Guernsey 
she  lived  in  the  same  close  relationship  to  him 
and  to  his  family.  Mme.  Hugo  died  in  1868, 
having  known  for  thirty-three  years  that  she 
was  only  second  in  her  husband's  thoughts. 
Was  she  doing  penance,  or  was  she  merely  ac- 
cepting the  inevitable?  In  any  case,  her  posi- 
tion was  most  pathetic,  though  she  uttered  no 
complaint. 

A  very  curious  and  poignant  picture  of  her 
just  before  her  death  has  been  given  by  the  pen 
of  a  visitor  in  Guernsey.  He  had  met  Hugo 
and  his  sons;  he  had  seen  the  great  novelist 
eating  enormous  slices  of  roast  beef  and  drink- 
ing great  goblets  of  red  wine  at  dinner,  and 
he  had  also  watched  him  early  each  morning, 
divested  of  all  his  clothing  and  splashing  about 
in  a  bath-tub  on  the  top  of  his  house,  in  view 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  HUGOS       91 

of  all  the  town.  One  evening  he  called  and 
found  only  Mme.  Hugo.  She  was  reclining  on 
a  couch,  and  was  evidently  suffering  great  pain. 
Surprised,  he  asked  where  were  her  husband 
and  her  sons. 

"Oh,**  she  replied,  **they  Ve  all  gone  to  Mme. 
Drouet's  to  spend  the  evening  and  enjoy  them- 
selves. Go  also;  you'll  not  find  it  amusing 
here.** 

One  ponders  over  this  sad  scene  with  con- 
flicting thoughts.  Was  there  really  any  truth 
in  the  story  at  which  Sainte-Beuve  more  than 
hinted?  If  so,  Adele  Hugo  was  more  than 
punished.  The  other  woman  had  sinned  far 
more ;  and  yet  she  had  never  been  Hugo  *s  wife ; 
and  hence  perhaps  it  was  right  that  she  should 
suffer  less.  Suffer  she  did;  for  after  her  de- 
votion to  Hugo  had  become  sincere  and  deep, 
he  betrayed  her  confidence  by  an  intrigue  with 
a  girl  who  is  spoken  of  as  ** Claire.'*  The 
knowledge  of  it  caused  her  infinite  anguish,  but 
it  all  came  to  an  end;  and  she  lived  past  her 
eightieth  year,  long  after  the  death  of  Mme. 
Hugo.  She  died  only  a  short  time  before  the 
poet  himself  was  laid  to  rest  in  Paris  with 
magnificent  obsequies  which  an  emperor  might 
have  envied.    In  her  old  age,  Juliette  Drouet 

IV.— 7 


92     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

became  very  white  and  very  wan ;  yet  she  never 
quite  lost  the  charm  with  which,  as  a  girl,  she 
had  won  the  heart  of  Hugo. 

The  story  has  many  aspects.  One  may  see 
in  it  a  retribution,  or  one  may  see  in  it  only 
the  cruelty  of  life.  Perhaps  it  is  best  regarded 
simply  as  a  chapter  in  the  strange  life-histories 
of  men  of  genius. 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND 

TO  the  student  of  feminine  psychology  there 
is  no  more  curious  and  complex  problem 
than  the  one  that  meets  us  in  the  life  of  the 
gifted  French  writer  best  known  to  the  world 
as  George  Sand. 

To  analyze  this  woman  simply  as  a  writer 
would  in  itself  be  a  long,  difficult  task.  She 
wrote  voluminously,  with  a  fluid  rather  than 
a  fluent  pen.  She  scandalized  her  contem- 
poraries by  her  theories,  and  by  the  way  in 
which  she  applied  them  in  her  novels.  Her  fic- 
tion made  her,  in  the  history  of  French  lit- 
erature, second  only  to  Victor  Hugo.  She  might 
even  challenge  Hugo,  because  where  he  de- 
picts strange  and  monstrous  figures,  exag- 
gerated beyond  the  limits  of  actual  life, 
George  Sand  portrays  living  men  and  women, 
whose  instincts  and  desires  she  understands, 
and  whom  she  makes  us  see  precisely  as  if  we 
were  admitted  to  their  intimacy. 

But  George  Sand  puzzles  us  most  by  pe- 
culiarities which  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  recon- 
cile.   She  seemed  to  have  no  sense  of  chastity 

w 


96     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

whatever;  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  she  was  not 
grossly  sensual.  She  possessed  the  maternal 
instinct  to  a  high  degree,  and  liked  better 
to  be  a  mother  than  a  mistress  to  the  men 
whose  love  she  sought.  For  she  did  seek 
men's  love,  frankly  and  shamelessly,  only 
to  tire  of  it.  In  many  cases  she  seems  to  have 
been  swayed  by  vanity,  and  by  a  love  of  con- 
quest, rather  than  by  passion.  She  had  also 
a  spiritual,  imaginative  side  to  her  nature,  and 
she  could  be  a  far  better  comrade  than  any- 
thing more  intimate. 

The  name  given  to  this  strange  genius  at  birth 
was  Amantine  Lucile  Aurore  Dupin.  The  cir- 
cumstances of  her  ancestry  and  birth  were  quite 
unusual.  Her  father  was  a  lieutenant  in  the 
French  army.  His  grandmother  had  been  the 
natural  daughter  of  Marshal  Saxe,  who  was 
himself  the  illegitimate  son  of  Augustus  the 
Strong  of  Poland  and  of  the  bewitching 
Countess  of  Konigsmarck.  This  was  a  curious 
pedigree.  It  meant  strength  of  character,  eroti- 
cism, stubbornness,  imagination,  courage,  and 
recklessness. 

Her  father  complicated  the  matter  by  marry- 
ing suddenly  a  Parisian  of  the  lower  classes,  a 
bird-fancier   named   Sophie   Delaborde.     His 


THE  STOEY  OF  GEORGE  SAND      97 

daughter,  who  was  bom  in  1804,  used  afterward 
to  boast  that  on  one  side  she  was  sprung  from 
kings  and  nobles,  while  on  the  other  she  was 
a  daughter  of  the  people,  able,  therefore,  to 
understand  the  sentiments  of  the  aristocracy 
and  of  the  children  of  the  soil,  or  even  of  the 
gutter. 

She  was  fond  of  telling,  also,  of  the  omen 
which  attended  on  her  birth.  Her  father  and 
mother  were  at  a  country  dance  in  the  house 
of  a  fellow  officer  of  Dupin's.  Suddenly  Mme. 
Dupin  left  the  room.  Nothing  was  thought  of 
this,  and  the  dance  went  on.  In  less  than  an 
hour,  Dupin  was  called  aside  and  told  that  his 
wife  had  just  given  birth  to  a  child.  It  was  the 
child's  aunt  who  brought  the  news,  with  the 
joyous  comment: 

"She  will  be  lucky,  for  she  was  bom  among 
the  roses  and  to  the  sound  of  music.'* 

This  was  at  the  time  of  the  Napoleonic  wars. 
Lieutenant  Dupin  was  on  the  staff  of  Prince 
Murat,  and  little  Aurore,  as  she  was  called,  at 
the  age  of  three  accompanied  the  army,  as  did 
her  mother.  The  child  was  adopted  by  one  of 
those  hard-fighting,  veteran  regiments.  The 
rough  old  sergeants  nursed  her  and  petted  her. 
Even  the  prince  took  notice  of  her;  and  to 


98     FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

please  him  she  wore  the  green  uniform  of  a 
hussar. 

But  all  this  soon  passed,  and  she  was  pres- 
ently sent  to  live  with  her  grandmother  at  the 
estate  now  intimately  associated  with  her  name 
— Nohant,  in  the  valley  of  the  Indre,  in  the 
midst  of  a  rich  country,  a  love  for  which  she 
then  drank  in  so  deeply  that  nothing  in  her  later 
life  could  lessen  it.  She  was  always  the  friend 
of  the  peasant  and  of  the  country-folk  in  gen- 
eral. 

At  Nohant  she  was  given  over  to  her  grand- 
mother, to  be  reared  in  a  strangely  desultory 
sort  of  fashion,  doing  and  reading  and  studying 
those  things  which  could  best  develop  her  native 
gifts.  Her  father  had  great  influence  over  her, 
teaching  her  a  thousand  things  without  seeming 
to  teach  her  anything.  Of  him  George  Sand 
herself  has  written : 

Character  is  a  matter  of  heredity.  If  any  one  de- 
sires to  know  me,  he  must  know  my  father. 

Her  father,  however,  was  killed  by  a  fall  from 
a  horse ;  and  then  the  child  grew  up  almost  with- 
out any  formal  education.  A  tutor,  who  also 
managed  the  estate,  believed  with  Rousseau  that 
the  young  should  be  reared  according  to  their 
own    preferences.      Therefore,    Aurore    read 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND      99 

poems  and  childish  stories ;  she  gained  a  smat- 
tering of  Latin,  and  she  was  devoted  to  music 
and  the  elements  of  natural  science.  For  the 
rest  of  the  time  she  rambled  with  the  country- 
children,  learned  their  games,  and  became  a 
sort  of  leader  in  everything  they  did. 

Her  only  sorrow  was  the  fact  that  her  mother 
was  excluded  from  Nohant.  The  aristocratic 
old  grandmother  would  not  allow  under  her 
roof  her  son's  low-bom  wife;  but  she  was  de- 
voted to  her  little  grandchild.  The  girl  showed 
a  wonderful  degree  of  sensibility. 

This  life  was  adapted  to  her  nature.  She 
fed  her  imagination  in  a  perfectly  healthy  fash- 
ion; and,  living  so  much  out  of  doors,  she  ac- 
quired that  sound  physique  which  she  retained 
all  through  her  life. 

When  she  was  thirteen,  her  grandmother  sent 
the  girl  to  a  convent  school  in  Paris.  One 
might  suppose  that  the  sudden  change  from  the 
open  woods  and  fields  to  the  primness  of  a  re- 
ligious home  would  have  been  a  great  shock 
to  her,  and  that  with  her  disposition  she  might 
have  broken  out  into  wild  ways  that  would  have 
shocked  the  nuns.  But,  here,  as  elsewhere,  she 
showed  her  wonderful  adaptability.  It  even 
seemed  as  if  she  were  likely  to  become  what  the 


100    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

French  call  a  devote.  She  gave  herself  up  to 
mythical  thoughts,  and  expressed  a  desire  of 
taking  the  veil.  Her  confessor,  however,  was 
a  keen  student  of  human  nature,  and  he  per- 
ceived that  she  was  too  young  to  decide  upon 
the  renunciation  of  earthly  things.  Moreover, 
her  grandmother,  who  had  no  intention  that 
Aurore  should  become  a  nun,  hastened  to  Paris 
and  carried  her  back  to  Nohant. 

The  girl  was  now  sixteen,  and  her  compli- 
cated nature  began  to  make  itself  apparent. 
There  was  no  one  to  control  her,  because  her 
grandmother  was  confined  to  her  own  room. 
And  so  Aurore  Dupin,  now  in  superb  health, 
rushed  into  every  sort  of  diversion  with  all  the 
zest  of  youth.  She  read  voraciously — religion, 
poetry,  philosophy.  She  was  an  excellent  musi- 
cian, playing  the  piano  and  the  harp.  Once,  in 
a  spirit  of  unconscious  egotism,  she  wrote  to 
her  confessor: 

Do  you  think  that  my  philosophical  studies  are 
compatible  with  Christian  humility? 

The  shrewd  ecclesiastic  answered,  with  a 
touch  of  wholesome  irony : 

I  doubt,  my  daughter,  whether  your  philosophical 
studies  are  profound  enough  to  warrant  intellectual 
pride. 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  101 

This  stung  the  girl,  and  led  her  to  think  a 
little  less  of  her  own  abilities;  but  perhaps  it 
made  her  books  distasteful  to  her.  For  a  while 
she  seems  to  have  almost  forgotten  her  sex. 
She  began  to  dress  as  a  boy,  and  took  to  smok- 
ing large  quantities  of  tobacco.  Her  natural 
brother,  who  was  an  officer  in  the  army,  came 
down  to  Nohant  and  taught  her  to  ride — to  ride 
like  a  boy,  seated  astride.  She  went  about  with- 
out any  chaperon,  and  flirted  with  the  young 
men  of  the  neighborhood.  The  prim  manners 
of  the  place  made  her  subject  to  a  certain 
amount  of  scandal,  and  the  village  priest  chided 
her  in  language  that  was  far  from  tactful.  In 
return  she  refused  any  longer  to  attend  his 
church. 

Thus  she  was  living  when  her  grandmother 
died,  in  1821,  leaving  to  Aurore  her  entire  for- 
tune of  five  hundred  thousand  francs.  As  the 
girl  was  still  but  seventeen,  she  was  placed 
under  the  guardianship  of  the  nearest  relative 
on  her  father's  side — a  gentleman  of  rank. 
When  the  will  was  read,  Aurore  *s  mother  made 
a  violent  protest,  and  caused  a  most  unpleasant 
scene. 

"I  am  the  natural  guardian  of  my  child,** 
she  cried.    **No  one  can  take  away  my  rights  I*' 


102    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

The  young  girl  well  understood  that  this  was 
really  the  parting  of  the  ways.  If  she  turned 
toward  her  uncle,  she  would  be  forever  classed 
among  the  aristocracy.  If  she  chose  her  mother, 
who,  though  married,  was  essentially  a  grisette, 
then  she  must  live  with  grisettes,  and  find  her 
friends  among  the  friends  who  visited  her 
mother.  She  could  not  belong  to  both  worlds. 
She  must  decide  once  for  all  whether  she  would 
be  a  woman  of  rank  or  a  woman  entirely  sepa- 
rated from  the  circle  that  had  been  her  father's. 

One  must  respect  the  girl  for  making  the 
choice  she  did.  Understanding  the  situation  ab- 
solutely, she  chose  her  mother ;  and  perhaps  one 
would  not  have  had  her  do  otherwise.  Yet  in 
the  long  run  it  was  bound  to  be  a  mistake. 
Aurore  was  clever,  refined,  well  read,  and  had 
had  the  training  of  a  fashionable  convent 
school.  The  mother  was  ignorant  and  coarse, 
as  was  inevitable,  with  one  who  before  her  mar- 
riage had  been  half  shop-girl  and  half  cour- 
tesan. The  two  could  not  live  long  together,  and 
hence  it  was  not  unnatural  that  Aurore  Dupin 
should  marry,  to  enter  upon  a  new  career. 

Her  fortune  was  a  fairly  large  one  for  the 
times,  and  yet  not  large  enough  to  attract  men 
who  were  quite  her  equals.   Presently,  however, 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  103 

it  brought  to  her  a  sort  of  country  squire, 
named  Casimir  Dudevant.  He  was  the  illegiti- 
mate son  of  the  Baron  Dudevant.  He  had  been 
in  the  army,  and  had  studied  law;  but  he  pos- 
sessed no  intellectual  tastes.  He  was  outwardly 
eligible;  but  he  was  of  a  coarse  type — a  man 
who,  with  passing  years,  would  be  likely  to  take 
to  drink  and  vicious  amusements,  and  in  serious 
life  cared  only  for  his  cattle,  his  horses,  and  his 
hunting.  He  had,  however,  a  sort  of  jollity 
about  him  which  appealed  to  this  girl  of  eight- 
een ;  and  so  a  marriage  was  arranged.  Aurore 
Dupin  became  his  wife  in  1822,  and  he  secured 
the  control  of  her  fortune. 

The  first  few  years  after  her  marriage  were 
not  unhappy.  She  had  a  son,  Maurice  Dude- 
vant, and  a  daughter,  Solange,  and  she  loved 
them  both.  But  it  was  impossible  that  she 
should  continue  vegetating  mentally  upon  a 
farm  with  a  husband  who  was  a  fool,  a  drunk- 
ard, and  a  miser.  He  deteriorated;  his  wife 
grew  more  and  more  clever.  Dudevant  resented 
this.  It  made  him  uncomfortable.  Other  per- 
sons spoke  of  her  talk  as  brilliant.  He  bluntly 
told  her  that  it  was  silly,  and  that  she  must 
stop  it.  When  she  did  not  stop  it,  he  boxed  her 
ears.    This  caused  a  breach  between  the  pair 


104    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

which  was  never  healed.  Dudevant  drank  more 
and  more  heavily,  and  jeered  at  his  wife  be- 
cause she  was  ''always  looking  for  noon  at 
fourteen  o'clock."  He  had  always  flirted  with 
the  country  girls ;  but  now  he  openly  consorted 
with  his  wife's  chambermaid. 

Mme.  Dudevant,  on  her  side,  would  have 
nothing  more  to  do  with  this  rustic  rake.  She 
formed  what  she  called  a  platonic  friendship — 
and  it  was  really  so — ^with  a  certain  M.  de  Seze, 
who  was  advocate-general  at  Bordeaux.  With 
him  this  clever  woman  could  talk  without  being 
called  silly,  and  he  took  sincere  pleasure  in  her 
company.  He  might,  in  fact,  have  gone  much 
further,  had  not  both  of  them  been  in  an  im- 
possible situation. 

Aurore  Dudevant  really  believed  that  she  was 
swayed  by  a  pure  and  mystic  passion.  De  Seze, 
on  the  other  hand,  believed  this  mystic  passion 
to  be  genuine  love.  Coming  to  visit  her  at  No- 
hant,  he  was  revolted  by  the  clownish  husband 
with  whom  she  lived.  It  gave  him  an  esthetic 
shock  to  see  that  she  had  borne  children  to  this 
boor.  Therefore  he  shrank  back  from  her,  and 
in  time  their  relation  faded  into  nothingness. 

It  happened,  soon  after,  that  she  found  a 
packet  in  her  husband's  desk,  marked  "Not  to 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  105 

be  opened  until  after  my  death.'*    She  wrote 
of  this  in  her  correspondence : 

I  had  not  the  patience  to  wait  till  widowhood.  No 
one  can  be  sure  of  surviving  anybody.  I  assumed  that 
my  husband  had  died,  and  I  was  very  glad  to  learn 
what  he  thought  of  me  while  he  was  alive.  Since  the 
package  was  addressed  to  me,  it  was  not  dishonorable 
for  me  to  open  it. 

And  so  she  opened  it.  It  proved  to  be  his 
will,  but  containing,  as  a  preamble,  his  curses 
on  her,  expressions  of  contempt,  and  all  the 
vulgar  outpouring  of  an  evil  temper  and  angry 
passion.  She  went  to  her  husband  as  he  was 
opening  a  bottle,  and  flung  the  document  upon 
the  table.  He  cowered  at  her  glance,  at  her 
firmness,  and  at  her  cold  hatred.  He  grumbled 
and  argued  and  entreated ;  but  all  that  his  wife 
would  say  in  answer  was : 

"I  must  have  an  allowance.  I  am  going  to 
Paris,  and  my  children  are  to  remain  here." 

At  last  he  yielded,  and  she  went  at  once  to 
Paris,  taking  her  daughter  with  her,  and  having 
the  promise  of  fifteen  hundred  francs  a  year 
out  of  the  half -million  that  was  hers  by  right. 

In  Paris  she  developed  into  a  thorough-paced 
Bohemian.  She  tried  to  make  a  living  in  sundry 
hopeless  ways,  and  at  last  she  took  to  litera- 


106    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

ture.  She  was  living  in  a  garret,  with  little  to 
eat,  and  sometimes  without  a  fire  in  winter. 
She  had  some  friends  who  helped  her  as  well  as 
they  could,  but  though  she  was  attached  to 
the  Figaro,  her  earnings  for  the  first  month 
amounted  to  only  fifteen  francs. 

Nevertheless,  she  would  not  despair.  The 
editors  and  publishers  might  turn  the  cold 
shoulder  to  her,  but  she  would  not  give  up  her 
ambitions.  She  went  down  into  the  Latin  Quar- 
ter, and  there  shook  off  the  proprieties  of  life. 
She  assumed  the  garb  of  a  man,  and  with  her 
quick  perception  she  came  to  know  the  left  bank 
of  the  Seine  just  as  she  had  known  the  country- 
side at  Nohant  or  the  little  world  at  her  convent 
school.  She  never  expected  again  to  see  any 
woman  of  her  own  rank  in  life.  Her  mother's 
influence  became  strong  in  her.    She  wrote : 

The  proprieties  are  the  guiding  principle  of  people 
without  soul  and  virtue.  The  good  opinion  of  the 
world  is  a  prostitute  who  gives  herself  to  the  highest 
bidder. 

She  still  pursued  her  trade  of  journalism, 
calling  herself  a  "newspaper  mechanic,"  sit- 
ting all  day  in  the  ofiice  of  the  Figaro  and  writ- 
ing whatever  was  demanded,  while  at  night  she 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  107 

would  prowl  in  the  streets  haunting  the  cafes, 
continuing  to  dress  like  a  man,  drinking  sour 
wine,  and  smoking  cheap  cigars. 

One  of  her  companions  in  this  sort  of  hand- 
to-mouth  journalism  was  a  young  student  and 
writer  named  Jules  Sandeau,  a  man  seven  years 
younger  than  his  comrade.  He  was  at  that 
time  as  indigent  as  she,  and  their  hardships, 
shared  in  common,  brought  them  very  close  to- 
gether. He  was  clever,  boyish,  and  sensitive, 
and  it  was  not  long  before  he  had  fallen  at  her 
feet  and  kissed  her  knees,  begging  that  she 
would  requite  the  love  he  felt  for  her.  Accord- 
ing to  herself,  she  resisted  him  for  six  months, 
and  then  at  last  she  yielded.  The  two  made 
their  home  together,  and  for  a  while  were  won- 
derfully happy.  Their  work  and  their  diver- 
sions they  enjoyed  in  common,  and  now  for  the 
first  time  she  experienced  emotions  which  in  all 
probability  she  had  never  known  before. 

Probably  not  very  much  importance  is  to  be 
given  to  the  earlier  flirtations  of  George  Sand, 
though  she  herself  never  tried  to  stop  the 
mouth  of  scandal.  Even  before  she  left  her 
husband,  she  was  credited  with  having  four 
lovers;  but  all  she  said,  when  the  report  was 
brought  to  her,  was  this:    **Four  lovers  are 

rv.—S 


108    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

none  too  many  for  one  with  such  lively  passions 
as  mine." 

This  very  frankness  makes  it  likely  that  she 
enjoyed  shocking  her  prim  neighbors  at  Nohant. 
Eut  if  she  only  played  at  love-making  then,  she 
now  gave  herself  np  to  it  with  entire  abandon- 
ment, intoxicated,  fascinated,  satisfied.  She 
herself  wrote: 

How  I  wish  I  could  impart  to  you  this  sense  of  the 
intensity  and  joyousness  of  life  that  I  have  in  my 
veins.  To  live!  How  sweet  it  is,  and  how  good,  in 
spite  of  annoyances,  husbands,  debts,  relations,  scan- 
dal-mongers, sufferings,  and  irritations!  To  live! 
It  is  intoxicating!  To  love,  and  to  be  loved!  It  is 
happiness!    It  is  heaven! 

In  collaboration  with  Jules  Sandeau,  she 
wrote  a  novel  called  Rose  et  Blanche.  The 
two  lovers  were  uncertain  what  name  to  place 
upon  the  title-page,  but  finally  they  hit  upon 
the  pseudonym  of  Jules  Sand.  The  book  suc- 
ceeded ;  but  thereafter  each  of  them  wrote  sepa- 
rately, Jules  Sandeau  using  his  own  name,  and 
Mme.  Dudevant  styling  herself  George  Sand,  a 
name  by  which  she  was  to  be  illustrious  ever 
after. 

As  a  novelist,  she  had  found  her  real  vocation. 
She  was  not  yet  well  known,  but  she  was  on  the 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     109 

verge  of  fame.  As  soon  as  she  had  written 
Indiana  and  Valentine,  George  Sand  had  se- 
cured a  place  in  the  world  of  letters.  The 
magazine  which  still  exists  as  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes  gave  her  a  retaining  fee  of  four 
thousand  francs  a  year,  and  many  other  publi- 
cations begged  her  to  write  serial  stories  for 
them. 

The  vein  which  ran  through  all  her  stories 
was  new  and  piquant.    As  was  said  of  her : 

In  George  Sand,  whenever  a  lady  wishes  to  change 
her  lover,  God  is  always  there  to  make  the  transfer 
easy. 

In  other  words,  she  preached  free  love  in  the 
name  of  religion.  This  was  not  a  new  doctrine 
with  her.  After  the  first  break  with  her  hus- 
band, she  had  made  up  her  mind  about  certain 
matters,  and  wrote: 

One  is  no  more  justified  in  claiming  the  ownership 
of  a  soul  than  in  claiming  the  ownership  of  a  slave. 

According  to  her,  the  ties  between  a  man  and 
a  woman  are  sacred  only  when  they  are  sancti- 
fied by  love ;  and  she  distinguished  between  love 
and  passion  in  this  epigram : 

Love  seeks  to  give,  while  passion  seeks  to  take. 


110    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

At  this  time,  George  Sand  was  in  her  twenty- 
seventh  year.  She  was  not  beautiful,  though 
there  was  something  about  her  which  attracted 
observation.  Of  middle  height,  she  was  fairly 
slender.  Her  eyes  were  somewhat  projecting, 
and  her  mouth  was  almost  sullen  when  in  re- 
pose. Her  manners  were  peculiar,  combining 
boldness  with  timidity.  Her  address  was  almost 
as  familiar  as  a  man's,  so  that  it  was  easy  to 
be  acquainted  with  her;  yet  a  certain  haughti- 
ness and  a  touch  of  aristocratic  pride  made  it 
plain  that  she  had  drawn  a  line  which  none 
must  pass  without  her  wish.  When  she  was 
deeply  stirred,  however,  she  burst  forth  into 
an  extraordinary  vivacity,  showing  a  nature 
richly  endowed  and  eager  to  yield  its  treas- 
ures. 

The  existence  which  she  now  led  was  a  curi- 
ous one.  She  still  visited  her  husband  at 
Nohant,  so  that  she  might  see  her  son,  and 
sometimes,  when  M.  Dudevant  came  to  town, 
he  called  upon  her  in  the  apartments  which 
she  shared  with  Jules  Sandeau.  He  had  ac- 
cepted the  situation,  and  with  his  crudeness  and 
lack  of  feeling  he  seemed  to  think  it,  if  not 
natural,  at  least  diverting.  At  any  rate,  so 
long  as  he  could  retain  her  half -million  francs, 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     111 

he  was  not  the  man  to  make  trouble  about  his 
former  wife's  arrangements. 

Meanwhile,  there  began  to  be  perceptible  the 
very  slightest  rift  within  the  lute  of  her  ro- 
mance. Was  her  love  for  Sandeau  really  love, 
or  was  it  only  passion?  In  his  absence,  at  any 
rate,  the  old  obsession  still  continued.  Here 
we  see,  first  of  all,  intense  pleasure  shading  off 
into  a  sort  of  maternal  fondness.  She  sends 
Sandeau  adoring  letters.  She  is  afraid  that 
his  delicate  appetite  is  not  properly  satisfied. 

Yet,  again,  there  are  times  when  she  feels 
that  he  is  irritating  and  ill.  Those  who  knew 
them  said  that  her  nature  was  too  passionate 
and  her  love  was  too  exacting  for  him.  One 
of  her  letters  seems  to  make  this  plain.  She 
writes  that  she  feels  uneasy,  and  even  fright- 
fully remorseful,  at  seeing  Sandeau  **pine 
away.'*  She  knows,  she  avows,  that  she  is  kill- 
ing him,  that  her  caresses  are  a  poison,  and 
her  love  a  consuming  fire. 


It  is  an  appalling  thought,  and  Jules  will  not 
understand  it.  He  laughs  at  it ;  and  when,  in  the  midst 
of  his  transports  of  delight,  the  idea  comes  to  me  and 
makes  my  blood  run  cold,  he  tells  me  that  here  is  the 
death  that  he  would  like  to  die.  At  such  moments  he 
promises  whatever  I  make  him  promise. 


112    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

This  letter  throws  a  clear  light  upon  the 
nature  of  George  Sand's  temperament.  It  will 
be  found  all  through  her  career,  not  only  that 
she  sought  to  inspire  passion,  but  that  she 
strove  to  gratify  it  after  fashions  of  her  own. 
One  little  passage  from  a  description  of  her 
written  by  the  younger  Dumas  will  perhaps 
make  this  phase  of  her  character  more  intelli- 
gible, without  going  further  than  is  strictly 
necessary: 

Mme.  Sand  has  little  hands  without  any  bones,  soft 
and  plump.  She  is  by  destiny  a  woman  of  excessive 
curiosity,  always  disappointed,  always  deceived  in 
her  incessant  investigation,  but  she  is  not  fundamen- 
tally ardent.  In  vain  would  she  like  to  be  so,  but  she 
does  not  find  it  possible.  Her  physical  nature  utterly 
refuses. 

The  reader  will  find  in  all  that  has  now  been 
said  the  true  explanation  of  George  Sand. 
Abounding  with  life,  but  incapable  of  long 
stretches  of  ardent  love,  she  became  a  woman 
who  sought  conquests  everywhere  without  giv- 
ing in  return  more  than  her  temperament  made 
it  possible  for  her  to  do.  She  loved  Sandeau 
as  much  as  she  ever  loved  any  man ;  and  yet  she 
left  him  with  a  sense  that  she  had  never  become 
wholly  his.  Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  why  their 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     113 

romance  came  to  an  end  abruptly,  and  not  alto- 
gether fittingly. 

She  had  been  spending  a  short  time  at  No- 
hant,  and  came  to  Paris  without  announcement. 
She  intended  to  surprise  her  lover,  and  she 
surely  did  so.  She  found  him  in  the  apartment 
that  had  been  theirs,  with  his  arms  about  an 
attractive  laundry-girl.  Thus  closed  what  was 
probably  the  only  true  romance  in  the  life  of 
George  Sand.  Afterward  she  had  many  lovers, 
but  to  no  one  did  she  so  nearly  become  a  true 
mate. 

As  it  was,  she  ended  her  association  with 
Sandeau,  and  each  pursued  a  separate  path  to 
fame.  Sandeau  afterward  became  a  well-known 
novelist  and  dramatist.  He  was,  in  fact,  the 
first  writer  of  fiction  who  was  admitted  to  the 
French  Academy.  The  woman  to  whom  he  had 
been  unfaithful  became  greater  still,  because 
her  fame  was  not  only  national,  but  cosmo- 
politan. 

For  a  time  after  her  deception  by  Sandeau, 
she  felt  absolutely  devoid  of  all  emotions.  She 
shunned  men,  and  sought  the  friendship  of 
Marie  Dorval,  a  clever  actress  who  was  destined 
afterward  to  break  the  heart  of  Alfred  de 
Vigny.    The  two  went  down  into  the  country; 


114    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

and  there  George  Sand  wrote  hour  after  hour, 
sitting  by  her  fireside,  and  showing  herself  a 
tender  mother  to  her  little  daughter  Solange. 

This  life  lasted  for  a  while,  but  it  was  not 
the  sort  of  life  that  would  now  content  her. 
She  had  many  visitors  from  Paris,  among  them 
Sainte-Beuve,  the  critic,  who  brought  with  him 
Prosper  Merimee,  then  unknown,  but  later 
famous  as  master  of  revels  to  the  third  Na- 
poleon and  as  the  author  of  Carmen.  Meri- 
mee had  a  certain  fascination  of  manner,  and 
the  predatory  instincts  of  George  Sand  were 
again  aroused.  One  day,  when  she  felt  bored 
and  desperate,  Merimee  paid  his  court  to  her, 
and  she  listened  to  him.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  of  her  intimacies,  since  it  began, 
continued,  and  ended  all  in  the  space  of  a  single 
week.  "When  Merimee  left  Nohant,  he  was  des- 
tined never  again  to  see  George  Sand,  except 
long  afterward  at  a  dinner-party,  where  the 
two  stared  at  each  other  sharply,  but  did  not 
speak.  This  affair,  however,  made  it  plain  that 
she  could  not  long  remain  at  Nohant,  and  that 
she  pined  for  Paris. 

Returning  thither,  she  is  said  to  have  set  her 
cap  at  Victor  Hugo,  who  was,  however,  too 
much  in  love  with  himself  to  care  for  any  one. 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     115 

especially  a  woman  who  was  his  literary  rival. 
She  is  said  for  a  time  to  have  been  allied  with 
Gustave  Planche,  a  dramatic  critic;  but  she 
always  denied  this,  and  her  denial  may  be  taken 
as  quite  truthful.  Soon,  however,  she  was  to 
begin  an  episode  which  has  been  more  famous 
than  any  other  in  her  curious  history,  for  she 
met  Alfred  de  Musset,  then  a  youth  of  twenty- 
three,  but  already  well  known  for  his  poems  and 
his  plays. 

Musset  was  of  noble  birth.  He  would  prob- 
ably have  been  better  for  a  plebeian  strain, 
since  there  was  in  him  a  touch  of  the  degen- 
erate. His  mother's  father  had  published  a 
humanitarian  poem  on  cats.  His  great-uncle 
had  written  a  peculiar  novel.  Young  Alfred 
was  nervous,  delicate,  slightly  epileptic,  and  it 
is  certain  that  he  was  given  to  dissipation, 
which  so  far  had  affected  his  health  only  by 
making  him  hysterical.  He  was  an  exceed- 
ingly handsome  youth,  with  exquisite  manners, 
**  dreamy  rather  than  dazzling  eyes,  dilated  nos- 
trils, and  vermilion  lips  half  opened."  Such 
was  he  when  George  Sand,  then  seven  years  his 
senior,  met  him. 

There  is  something  which,  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
mind,  seems  far  more  absurd  than  pathetic 


116    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

about  the  events  which  presently  took  place.  A 
woman  like  George  Sand  at  thirty  was  prac- 
tically twice  the  age  of  this  nervous  boy  of 
twenty-three,  who  had  as  yet  seen  little  of  the 
world.  At  first  she  seemed  to  realize  the  fact 
herself ;  but  her  vanity  led  her  to  begin  an  in- 
trigue, which  must  have  been  almost  wholly 
without  excitement  on  her  part,  but  which  to 
him,  for  a  time,  was  everything  in  the  world. 

Experimenting,  as  usual,  after  the  fashion 
described  by  Dumas,  she  went  with  De  Musset 
for  a  ** honeymoon"  to  Fontainebleau.  But 
they  could  not  stay  there  forever,  and  presently 
they  decided  upon  a  journey  to  Italy.  Before 
they  went,  however,  they  thought  it  necessary 
to  get  formal  permission  from  Alfred's  mother! 

Naturally  enough,  Mme.  de  Musset  refused 
consent.  She  had  read  George  Sand's  ro- 
mances, and  had  asked  scornfully: 

"Has  the  woman  never  in  her  life  met  a 
gentleman?" 

She  accepted  the  relations  between  them,  but 
that  she  should  be  asked  to  sanction  this  sort 
of  affair  was  rather  too  much,  even  for  a  French 
mother  who  has  become  accustomed  to  many 
strange  things.  Then  there  was  a  curious  hap- 
pening.   At  nine  o'clock  at  night,  George  Sand 


THE  STOEY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     117 

took  a  cab  and  drove  to  the  house  of  Mme.  de 
Musset,  to  whom  she  sent  up  a  message  that  a 
lady  wished  to  see  her.  Mme.  de  Musset  came 
down,  and,  finding  a  woman  alone  in  a  car- 
riage, she  entered  it.  Then  George  Sand  burst 
forth  in  a  torrent  of  sentimental  eloquence.  She 
overpowered  her  lover's  mother,  promised  to 
take  great  care  of  the  delicate  youth,  and  finally 
drove  away  to  meet  Alfred  at  the  coach-yard. 

They  started  off  in  the  mist,  their  coach 
being  the  thirteenth  to  leave  the  yard ;  but  the 
two  lovers  were  in  a  merry  mood,  and  enjoyed 
themselves  all  the  way  from  Paris  to  Marseilles. 
By  steamer  they  went  to  Leghorn ;  and  finally, 
in  January,  1834,  they  took  an  apartment  in  a 
hotel  at  Venice.  What  had  happened  that  their 
arrival  in  Venice  should  be  the  beginning  of  a 
quarrel,  no  one  knows.  George  Sand  has 
told  the  story,  and  Paul  de  Musset — ^Alfred's 
brother — has  told  the  story,  but  each  of  them 
has  doubtless  omitted  a  large  part  of  the  truth. 

It  is  likely  that  on  their  long  journey  each 
had  learned  too  much  of  the  other.  Thus,  Paul 
de  Musset  says  that  George  Sand  made  herself 
outrageous  by  her  conversation,  telling  every 
one  of  her  mother's  adventures  in  the  army  of 
Italy,  including  her  relations  with  the  general- 


118    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

in-chief.  She  also  declared  that  she  herself  was 
bom  within  a  month  of  her  parents'  wedding- 
day.  Very  likely  she  did  say  all  these  things, 
whether  they  were  true  or  not.  She  had  set 
herself  to  wage  war  against  conventional  so- 
ciety, and  she  did  everything  to  shock  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  Alfred  de  Musset  fell  ill 
after  having  lost  ten  thousand  francs  in  a 
gambling-house.  George  Sand  was  not  fond  of 
persons  who  were  ill.  She  herself  was  working 
like  a  horse,  writing  from  eight  to  thirteen 
hours  a  day.  When  Musset  collapsed  she  sent 
for  a  handsome  young  Italian  doctor  named 
Pagello,  with  whom  she  had  struck  up  a  casual 
acquaintance.  He  finally  cured  Musset,  but  he 
also  cured  George  Sand  of  any  love  for  Musset. 

Before  long  she  and  Pagello  were  on  their 
way  back  to  Paris,  leaving  the  poor,  fevered, 
whimpering  poet  to  bite  his  nails  and  think  un- 
utterable things.  But  he  ought  to  have  known 
George  Sand.  After  that,  everybody  knew  her. 
They  knew  just  how  much  she  cared  when  she 
professed  to  care,  and  when  she  acted  as  she 
acted  with  Pagello  no  earlier  lover  had  any  one 
but  himself  to  blame. 

Only  sentimentalists  can  take  this  story  seri- 
ously.  To  them  it  has  a  sort  of  morbid  interest. 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND     119 

They  like  to  picture  Musset  raving  and  shout- 
ing in  his  delirium,  and  then  to  read  how 
George  Sand  sat  on  Pagello  's  knees,  kissing  him 
and  drinking  out  of  the  same  cup.  But  to  the 
healthy  mind  the  whole  story  is  repulsive — 
from  George  Sand's  appeal  to  Mme.  de  Musset 
down  to  the  very  end,  when  Pagello  came  to 
Paris,  where  his  broken  French  excited  a  polite 
ridicule. 

There  was  a  touch  of  genuine  sentiment 
about  the  affair  with  Jules  Sandeau ;  but  after 
that,  one  can  only  see  in  George  Sand  a  half- 
libidinous  grisette,  such  as  her  mother  was 
before  her,  with  a  perfect  willingness  to  experi- 
ment in  every  form  of  lawless  love.  As  for 
Musset,  whose  heart  she  was  supposed  to  have 
broken,  within  a  year  he  was  dangling  after  the 
famous  singer,  Mme.  Malibran,  and  writing 
poems  to  her  which  advertised  their  intrigue. 

After  this  episode  with  Pagello,  it  cannot 
be  said  that  the  life  of  George  Sand  was  edify- 
ing in  any  respect,  because  no  one  can  assume 
that  she  was  sincere.  She  had  loved  Jules  San- 
deau as  much  as  she  could  love  any  one,  but 
all  the  rest  of  her  intrigues  and  affinities  were 
in  the  nature  of  experiments.  She  even  took 
back  Alfred  de  Musset,  although  they  could 


120    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

never  again  regard  each  other  without  sus- 
picion. George  Sand  cut  off  all  her  hair  and 
gave  it  to  Musset,  so  eager  was  she  to  keep  him 
as  a  matter  of  conquest;  but  he  was  tired  of 
her,  and  even  this  theatrical  trick  was  of  no 
avail. 

She  proceeded  to  other  less  known  and  less 
humiliating  adventures.  She  tried  to  fascinate 
the  artist  Delacroix.  She  set  her  cap  at  Franz 
Liszt,  who  rather  astonished  her  by  saying  that 
only  God  was  worthy  to  be  loved.  She  ex- 
pressed a  yearning  for  the  affections  of  the  elder 
Dumas ;  but  that  good-natured  giant  laughed  at 
her,  and  in  fact  gave  her  some  sound  advice, 
and  let  her  smoke  unsentimentally  in  his  study. 
She  was  a  good  deal  taken  with  a  noisy  dema- 
gogue named  Michel,  a  lawyer  at  Bourges,  who 
on  one  occasion  shut  her  up  in  her  room  and 
harangued  her  on  sociology  until  she  was  as 
weary  of  his  talk  as  of  his  wooden  shoes,  his 
shapeless  greatcoat,  his  spectacles,  and  his 
skull-cap.  Balzac  felt  her  fascination,  but  cared 
nothing  for  her,  since  his  love  was  given  to 
Mme.  Hanska. 

In  the  meanwhile,  she  was  paying  visits  to 
her  husband  at  Nohant,  where  she  wrangled 
with  him  over  money  matters,  and  where  he 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  121 

would  once  have  shot  her  had  the  guests  pres- 
ent not  interfered.  She  secured  her  dowry  by 
litigation,  so  that  she  was  well  off,  even  without 
her  literary  earnings.  These  were  by  no  means 
so  large  as  one  would  think  from  her  popularity 
and  from  the  number  of  books  she  wrote.  It  is 
estimated  that  her  whole  gains  amounted  to 
about  a  million  francs,  extending  over  a 
period  of  forty-five  years.  It  is  just  half  the 
amount  that  Trollope  earned  in  about  the  same 
period,  and  justifies  his  remark — **  adequate, 
but  not  splendid." 

One  of  those  brief  and  strange  intimacies 
that  marked  the  career  of  George  Sand  came 
about  in  a  curious  way.  Octave  Feuillet,  a  man 
of  aristocratic  birth,  had  set  himself  to  write 
novels  which  portrayed  the  cynicism  and  hard- 
ness of  the  upper  classes  in  France.  One  of 
these  novels,  Sihylle,  excited  the  anger  of 
George  Sand.  She  had  not  known  Feuillet  be- 
fore; yet  now  she  sought  him  out,  at  first  in 
order  to  berate  him  for  his  book,  but  in  the 
end  to  add  him  to  her  variegated  string  of 
lovers. 

It  has  been  said  of  Feuillet  that  he  was  a  sort 
of  "domesticated  Musset.'*  At  any  rate,  he 
was  far  less  sensitive  than  Musset,  and  George 


122    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Sand  was  about  seventeen  years  his  senior. 
They  parted  after  a  short  time,  she  going  her 
way  as  a  writer  of  novels  that  were  very  differ- 
ent from  her  earlier  ones,  while  Feuillet  grew 
more  and  more  cynical  and  even  stern,  as  he 
lashed  the  abnormal,  neuropathic  men  and 
women  about  him. 

The  last  great  emotional  crisis  in  George 
Sand's  life  was  that  which  centers  around  her 
relations  with  Frederic  Chopin.  Chopin  was 
the  greatest  genius  who  ever  loved  her.  It  is 
rather  odd  that  he  loved  her.  She  had  known 
him  for  two  years,  and  had  not  seriously 
thought  of  him,  though  there  is  a  story  that 
when  she  first  met  him  she  kissed  him  before 
he  had  even  been  presented  to  her.  She  waited 
two  years,  and  in  those  two  years  she  had  three 
lovers.  Then  at  last  she  once  more  met  Chopin, 
when  he  was  in  a  state  of  melancholy,  because  a 
Polish  girl  had  proved  unfaithful  to  him. 

It  was  the  psychological  moment;  for  this 
other  woman,  who  was  a  devourer  of  hearts, 
found  him  at  a  piano,  improvising  a  lamenta- 
tion. George  Sand  stood  beside  him,  listening. 
When  he  finished  and  looked  up  at  her,  their 
eyes  met.  She  bent  down  without  a  word  and 
kissed  him  on  the  lips. 


THE  STORY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  123 

What  was  she  like  when  he  saw  her  then? 
Grenier  has  described  her  in  these  words: 

She  was  short  and  stout,  but  her  face  attracted  aK 
my  attention,  the  eyes  especially.  They  were  won- 
derful eyes — a  little  too  close  together,  it  may  be, 
large,  with  full  eyelids,  and  black,  very  black,  but  by 
no  means  lustrous;  they  reminded  me  of  unpolished 
marble,  or  rather  of  velvet,  and  this  gave  a  strange, 
dull,  even  cold  expression  to  her  countenance.  Her 
fine  eyebrows  and  these  great  placid  eyes  gave  her 
an  air  of  strength  and  dignity  which  was  not  borne 
out  by  the  lower  part  of  her  face.  Her  nose  was 
rather  thick  and  not  over  shapely.  Her  mouth  was 
also  rather  coarse,  and  her  chin  small.  She  spoke 
with  great  simplicity,  and  her  manners  were  very 
quiet. 

Such  as  she  was,  she  attached  herself  to 
Chopin  for  eight  years.  At  first  they  traveled 
together  very  quietly  to  Majorca;  and  there, 
just  as  Musset  had  fallen  ill  at  Venice,  Chopin 
became  feverish  and  an  invalid.  **  Chopin 
coughs  most  gracefully,"  George  Sand  wrote  of 
him,  and  again: 

Chopin  is  the  most  inconstant  of  men.  There  is 
nothing  permanent  about  him  but  his  cough. 

It  is  not  surprising  if  her  nerves  sometimes 
gave  way.  Acting  as  sick  nurse,  writing  herself 
with  rheumatic  fingers,  robbed  by  every  one 

IV.— 9 


124    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

about  her,  and  viewed  with  suspicion  by  the 
peasants  because  she  did  not  go  to  church,  she 
may  be  perhaps  excused  for  her  sharp  words 
when,  in  fact,  her  deeds  were  kind. 

Afterward,  with  Chopin,  she  returned  to 
Paris,  and  the  two  lived  openly  together  for 
seven  years  longer.  An  immense  literature 
has  grown  around  the  subject  of  their  relations. 
To  this  literature  George  Sand  herself  con- 
tributed very  largely.  Chopin  never  wrote  a 
word ;  but  what  he  failed  to  do,  his  friends  and 
pupils  did  unsparingly. 

Probably  the  truth  is  somewhat  as  one  might 
expect.  During  the  first  period  of  fascination, 
George  Sand  was  to  Chopin  what  she  had  been 
to  Sandeau  and  to  Musset;  and  with  her 
strange  and  subtle  ways,  she  had  undermined 
his  health.  But  afterward  that  sort  of  love 
died  out,  and  was  succeeded  by  something  like 
friendship.  At  any  rate,  this  woman  showed, 
as  she  had  shown  to  others,  a  vast  maternal 
kindness.  She  writes  to  him  finally  as  "your 
old  woman,"  and  she  does  wonders  in  the  way 
of  nursing  and  care. 

But  in  1847  came  a  break  between  the  two. 
Whatever  the  mystery  of  it  may  be,  it  turns 
upon  what  Chopin  said  of  Sand: 


THE  STOEY  OF  GEORGE  SAND  125 

**I  have  never  cursed  any  one,  but  now  I 
am  so  weary  of  life  that  I  am  near  cursing 
her.  Yet  she  suffers,  too,  and  more,  be- 
cause she  grows  older  as  she  grows  more 
wicked." 

In  1848,  Chopin  gave  his  last  concert  in  Paris, 
and  in  1849  he  died.  According  to  some,  he  was 
the  victim  of  a  Messalina.  According  to  others, 
it  was  only  "Messalina**  that  had  kept  him 
alive  so  long. 

However,  with  his  death  came  a  change  in  the 
nature  of  George  Sand.  Emotionally,  she  was 
an  extinct  volcano.  Intellectually,  she  was  at 
her  very  best.  She  no  longer  tore  passions  into 
tatters,  but  wrote  naturally,  simply,  stories  of 
country  life  and  tales  for  children.  In  one  of 
her  books  she  has  given  an  enduring  picture  of 
the  Franco-Prussian  War.  There  are  many 
rather  pleasant  descriptions  of  her  then,  living 
at  Nohant,  where  she  made  a  curious  figure, 
bustling  about  in  ill-fitting  costumes,  and  smok- 
ing interminable  cigarettes. 

She  had  lived  much,  and  she  had  drunk  deep 
of  life,  when  she  died  in  1876.  One  might  be- 
lieve her  to  have  been  only  a  woman  of  per- 
petual liaisons.  Externally  she  was  this,  and 
yet  what  did  Balzac,  that  great  master  of  hu- 


126    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

man  psychology,  write  of  her  in  the  intimacy 
of  a  private  correspondence! 

She  is  a  female  bachelor.  She  is  an  artist.  She 
is  generous.  She  is  devoted.  She  is  chaste.  Her 
dominant  characteristics  are  those  of  a  man,  and 
therefore,  she  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  woman.  She 
is  an  excellent  mother,  adored  by  her  children. 
Morally,  she  is  like  a  lad  of  twenty ;  for  in  her  heart 
of  hearts,  she  is  more  than  chaste — she  is  a  prude. 
It  is  only  in  externals  that  she  comports  herself  as 
a  Bohemian.  All  her  follies  are  titles  to  glory  in  the 
eyes  of  those  whose  souls  are  noble. 

A  cnrious  verdict  this !  Her  love-life  seems 
almost  that  of  neither  man  nor  woman,  but  of 
an  animal.  Yet  whether  she  was  in  reality  re- 
sponsible for  what  she  did,  when  we  consider 
her  strange  heredity,  her  wretched  marriage, 
the  disillusions  of  her  early  life — ^who  shall  sit 
in  judgment  on  her,  since  who  knows  all? 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES 
DICKENS 


THE  MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS 

PERHAPS  no  public  man  in  the  English- 
speaking  world,  in  the  last  century,  was  so 
widely  and  intimately  known  as  Charles  Dick- 
ens. From  his  eighteenth  year,  when  he  won 
his  first  success  in  journalism,  down  through 
his  series  of  brilliant  triumphs  in  fiction,  he 
was  more  and  more  a  conspicuous  figure,  liv- 
ing in  the  blaze  of  an  intense  publicity.  He  met 
every  one  and  knew  every  one,  and  was  the 
companion  of  every  kind  of  man  and  woman. 
He  loved  to  frequent  the  ** caves  of  harmony" 
which  Thackeray  has  immortalized,  and  he  was 
a  member  of  all  the  best  Bohemian  clubs  of 
London.  Actors,  authors,  good  fellows  gener- 
ally, were  his  intimate  friends,  and  his  ac- 
quaintance extended  far  beyond  into  the  homes 
of  merchants  and  lawyers  and  the  mansions  of 
the  proudest  nobles.  Indeed,  he  seemed  to  be 
almost  a  universal  friend. 

One  remembers,  for  instance,  how  he  was 
called  in  to  arbitrate  between  Thackeray  and 
George  Augustus   Sala,  who  had  quarreled. 

190 


130    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

One  remembers  how  Lord  Byron's  daughter, 
Lady  Lovelace,  when  upon  her  sick-bed,  used  to 
send  for  Dickens  because  there  was  something 
in  his  genial,  sympathetic  manner  that  soothed 
her.  Crushing  pieces  of  ice  between  her  teeth 
in  agony,  she  would  speak  to  him  and  he  would 
answer  her  in  his  rich,  manly  tones  until  she 
was  comforted  and  felt  able  to  endure  more 
hours  of  pain  without  complaint. 

Dickens  was  a  jovial  soul.  His  books  fairly 
steam  with  Christmas  cheer  and  hot  punch  and 
the  savor  of  plum  puddings,  very  much  as  do 
his  letters  to  his  intimate  friends.  Everybody 
knew  Dickens.  He  could  not  dine  in  public 
without  attracting  attention.  When  he  left  the 
dining-room,  his  admirers  would  descend  upon 
his  table  and  carry  off  egg-shells,  orange-peels, 
and  other  things  that  remained  behind,  so  that 
they  might  have  memorials  of  this  much-loved 
writer.  Those  who  knew  him  only  by  sight 
would  often  stop  him  in  the  streets  and  ask  the 
privilege  of  shaking  hands  with  him ;  so  differ- 
ent was  he  from — let  us  say — Tennyson,  who 
was  as  great  an  Englishman  in  his  way  as  Dick- 
ens, but  who  kept  himself  aloof  and  saw  few 
strangers. 

It  is  hard  to  associate  anything  like  mystery 


MYSTERY  OF  CHAELES  DICKENS     131 

with  Dickens,  though  he  was  fond  of  mystery 
as  an  intellectual  diversion,  and  his  last  un- 
finished novel  was  The  Mystery  of  Edwin 
Drood.  Moreover,  no  one  admired  more  than 
he  those  complex  plots  which  Wilkie  Collins 
used  to  weave  under  the  influence  of  laudanum. 
But  as  for  his  own  life,  it  seemed  so  normal,  so 
free  from  anything  approaching  mystery,  that 
we  can  scarcely  believe  it  to  have  been  tinged 
with  darker  colors  than  those  which  appeared 
upon  the  surface. 

A  part  of  this  mystery  is  plain  enough.  The 
other  part  is  still  obscure — or  of  such  a  char- 
acter that  one  does  not  care  to  bring  it  wholly 
to  the  light.  It  had  to  do  with  his  various  rela- 
tions with  women. 

The  world  at  large  thinks  that  it  knows  this 
chapter  in  the  life  of  Dickens,  and  that  it  refers 
wholly  to  his  unfortunate  disagreement  with 
his  wife.  To  be  sure,  this  is  a  chapter  that  is 
writ  large  in  all  of  his  biographies,  and  yet  it 
is  nowhere  correctly  told.  His  chosen  biog- 
rapher was  John  Forster,  whose  Life  of  Charles 
Dickens,  in  three  volumes,  must  remain  a  stand- 
ard work;  but  even  Forster — we  may  assume 
through  tact — ^has  not  set  down  all  that  he 
could,  although  he  gives  a  clue. 


132    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

As  is  well  known,  Dickens  married  Miss 
Catherine  Hogarth  when  he  was  only  twenty- 
four.  He  had  just  published  his  Sketches  by 
Boz,  the  copyright  of  which  he  sold  for  one 
hundred  pounds,  and  was  beginning  the  Pick- 
wick Papers.  About  this  time  his  publisher 
brought  N.  P.  Willis  down  to  Furnival's  Inn  to 
see  the  man  whom  Willis  called  **a  young  para- 
graphist  for  the  Morning  Chronicle."  Willis 
thus  sketches  Dickens  and  his  surroundings : 

In  the  most  crowded  part  of  Holborn,  within  a 
door  or  two  of  the  Bull  and  Mouth  Inn,  we  pulled 
up  at  the  entrance  of  a  large  building  used  for  law- 
yers' chambers.  I  followed  by  a  long  flight  of  stairs 
to  an  upper  story,  and  was  ushered  into  an  uncar- 
peted  and  bleak-looking  room,  with  a  deal  table,  two 
or  three  chairs  and  a  few  books,  a  small  boy  and  Mr. 
Dickens  for  the  contents. 

I  was  only  struck  at  first  with  one  thing — and  I 
made  a  memorandum  of  it  that  evening  as  the  strong- 
est instance  I  had  seen  of  English  obsequiousness  to 
employers — the  degree  to  which  the  poor  author  was 
overpowered  with  the  honor  of  his  publisher's  visit! 
I  remember  saying  to  myself,  as  I  sat  down  on  a 
rickety  chair: 

"My  good  fellow,  if  you  were  in  America  with  that 
fine  face  and  your  ready  quill,  you  would  have  no 
need  to  be  condescended  to  by  a  publisher." 

Dickens  was  dressed  rery  much  as  he  has  since 
described  Dick  Swiveller,  minus  the  swell  look.  His 
hair  was  cropped  close  to  his  head,  his  clothes  scant, 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     133 

though  jauntily  cut,  and,  afUr  changing  a  ragged 
office-coat  for  a  shabby  blue,  he  stood  by  the  door, 
collarlees  and  buttoned  up,  the  Tory  personification 
of  a  dose  sailer  to  the  wind. 

Before  this  interview  with  Willis,  which  Dick- 
ens always  repudiated,  he  had  become  some- 
thing of  a  celebrity  among  the  newspaper  men 
with  whom  he  worked  as  a  stenographer.  As 
every  one  knows,  he  had  had  a  hard  time  in  his 
early  years,  working  in  a  blacking-shop,  and 
feeling  too  keenly  the  ignominious  position  of 
which  a  less  sensitive  boy  would  probably  have 
thought  nothing.  Then  he  became  a  shorthand 
reporter,  and  was  busy  at  his  work,  so  that  he 
had  little  time  for  amusements. 

It  has  been  generally  supposed  that  no  love- 
affair  entered  his  life  until  he  met  Catherine 
Hogarth,  whom  he  married  soon  after  making 
her  acquaintance.  People  who  are  eager  at 
ferreting  out  unimportant  facts  about  impor- 
tant men  had  unanimously  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  up  to  the  age  of  twenty  Dickens  was 
entirely  fancy-free.  It  was  left  to  an  Amer- 
ican to  disclose  the  fact  that  this  was  not  the 
case,  but  that  even  in  his  teens  he  had  been  cap- 
tivated by  a  girl  of  about  his  own  age. 

Inasmuch  as  the  only  reproach  that  was  ever 


134    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

made  against  Dickens  was  based  upon  his  love- 
affairs,  let  us  go  back  and  trace  them  from 
this  early  one  to  the  very  last,  which  must  yet 
for  some  years,  at  least,  remain  a  mystery. 

Everything  that  is  known  about  his  first  af- 
fair is  contained  in  a  book  very  beautifully 
printed,  but  inaccessible  to  most  readers.  Some 
years  ago  Mr.  William  K.  Bixby,  of  St.  Louis, 
found  in  London  a  collector  of  curios.  This 
man  had  in  his  stock  a  number  of  letters  which 
had  passed  between  a  Miss  Maria  Beadnell  and 
Charles  Dickens  when  the  two  were  about  nine- 
teen and  a  second  package  of  letters  represent- 
ing a  later  acquaintance,  about  1855,  at  which 
time  Miss  Beadnell  had  been  married  for  a  long 
time  to  a  Mr.  Henry  Louis  Winter,  of  12  Artil- 
lery Place,  London. 

The  copyright  laws  of  Great  Britain  would 
not  allow  Mr.  Bixby  to  publish  the  letters  in 
that  country,  and  he  did  not  care  to  give  them 
to  the  public  here.  Therefore,  he  presented 
them  to  the  Bibliophile  Society,  with  the  under- 
standing that  four  hundred  and  ninety-three 
copies,  with  the  Bibliophile  book-plate,  were  to 
be  printed  and  distributed  among  the  members 
of  the  society.  A  few  additional  copies  were 
struck  off,  but  these  did  not  bear  the  Bibliophile 


MYSTERY  OF  CHAELES  DICKENS     135 

book-plate.  Only  two  copies  are  available  for 
other  readers,  and  to  peruse  these  it  is  neces- 
sary to  visit  the  Congressional  Library  in 
Washington,  where  they  were  placed  on  July 
24,  1908. 

These  letters  form  two  series — the  first  writ- 
ten to  Miss  Beadnell  in  or  about  1829,  and  the 
second  written  to  Mrs.  Winter,  formerly  Miss 
Beadnell,  in  1855. 

The  book  also  contains  an  introduction  by 
Henry  H.  Harper,  who  sets  forth  some  theories 
which  the  facts,  in  my  opinion,  do  not  support ; 
and  there  are  a  number  of  interesting  por- 
traits, especially  one  of  Miss  Beadnell  in  1829 — 
a  lovely  girl  with  dark  curls.  Another  shows 
her  in  1855,  when  she  writes  of  herself  as  **old 
and  fat" — thereby  doing  herself  a  great  deal 
of  injustice;  for  although  she  had  lost  her 
youthful  beauty,  she  was  a  very  presentable 
woman  of  middle  age,  but  one  who  would  not 
be  particularly  noticed  in  any  company. 

Summing  up  briefly  these  different  letters,  it 
may  be  said  that  in  the  first  set  Dickens  wrote 
to  the  lady  ardently,  but  by  no  means  passion- 
ately. From  what  he  says  it  is  plain  enough 
that  she  did  not  respond  to  his  feeling,  and  that 
presently  she  left  London  and  went  to  Paris, 


136    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTOBY 

for  her  family  was  well-to-do,  while  Dickens 
was  living  from  hand  to  mouth. 

In  the  second  set  of  letters,  written  long 
afterward,  Mrs.  Winter  seems  to  have  **set 
her  cap"  at  the  now  famous  author;  but  at  that 
time  he  was  courted  by  every  one,  and  had  long 
ago  forgotten  the  lady  who  had  so  easily  dis- 
missed him  in  his  younger  days.  In  1855,  Mrs. 
Winter  seems  to  have  reproached  him  for  not 
having  been  more  constant  in  the  past;  but  he 
replied : 

You  answered  me  coldly  and  reproachfully,  and  so 
I  went  my  way. 

Mr.  Harper,  in  his  introduction,  tries  very 
hard  to  prove  that  in  writing  David  Copper- 
field  Dickens  drew  the  character  of  Dora  from 
Miss  Beadnell.  It  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  say 
from  whom  any  character  in  a  novel  is  drawn. 
An  author  takes  whatever  suits  his  purpose  in 
circumstance  and  fancy,  and  blends  them  all 
into  one  consistent  whole,  which  is  not  to  be 
identified  with  any  individual.  There  is  little 
reason  to  think  that  the  most  intimate  friends 
of  Dickens  and  of  his  family  were  mistaken 
through  all  the  years  when  they  were  certain 
that  the  boy  husband  and  the  girl  wife  of 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     137 

David  Copperfield  were  suggested  by  any- 
one save  Dickens  himself  and  Catherine  Ho- 
garth. 

Why  should  he  have  gone  back  to  a  mere 
passing  fancy,  to  a  girl  who  did  not  care  for 
him,  and  who  had  no  influence  on  his  life,  in- 
stead of  picturing,  as  David's  first  wife,  one 
whom  he  deeply  loved,  whom  he  married,  who 
was  the  mother  of  his  children,  and  who  made 
a  great  part  of  his  career,  even  that  part  which 
was  inwardly  half  tragic  and  wholly  mourn- 
ful? 

Miss  Beadnell  may  have  been  the  original  of 
Flora  in  Little  Dorrit,  though  even  this  is 
doubtful.  The  character  was  at  the  time 
ascribed  to  a  Miss  Anna  Maria  Leigh,  whom 
Dickens  sometimes  flirted  with  and  sometimes 
caricatured. 

When  Dickens  came  to  know  George  Hogarth, 
who  was  one  of  his  colleagues  on  the  staff  of  the 
Morning  Chronicle,  he  met  Hogarth's  daugh- 
ters— Catherine,  Georgina,  and  Mary — and  at 
once  fell  ardently  in  love  with  Catherine,  the 
eldest  and  prettiest  of  the  three.  He  himself 
was  almost  girlish,  with  his  fair  complexion 
and  light,  wavy  hair,  so  that  the  famous  sketch 
by  Maclise  has  a  remarkable  charm ;  yet  nobody 


138    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

could  really  say  with  truth  that  any  one  of  the 
three  girls  was  beautiful.  Georgina  Hogarth, 
however,  was  sweet-tempered  and  of  a  motherly 
disposition.  It  may  be  that  in  a  fashion  she 
loved  Dickens  all  her  life,  as  she  remained  with 
him  after  he  parted  from  her  sister,  taking 
the  utmost  care  of  his  children,  and  look- 
ing out  with  unselfish  fidelity  for  his  many 
needs. 

It  was  Mary,  however,  the  youngest  of  the 
Hogarths,  who  lived  with  the  Dickenses  during 
the  first  twelvemonth  of  their  married  life.  To 
Dickens  she  was  like  a  favorite  sister,  and  when 
she  died  very  suddenly,  in  her  eighteenth  year, 
her  loss  was  a  great  shock  to  him. 

It  was  believed  for  a  long  time — in  fact,  until 
their  separation — that  Dickens  and  his  wife 
were  extremely  happy  in  their  home  life.  His 
writings  glorified  all  that  was  domestic,  and 
paid  many  tender  tributes  to  the  joys  of  family 
affection.  When  the  separation  came  the  whole 
world  was  shocked.  And  yet  rather  early  in 
Dickens's  married  life  there  was  more  or 
less  infelicity.  In  his  Retrospections  of  an 
Active  Life,  Mr.  John  Bigelow  writes  a  few 
sentences  which  are  interesting  for  their  frank- 
ness, and  which  give  us  certain  hints : 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     139 

Mrs.  Dickens  was  not  a  handsome  woman,  though 
stout,  hearty,  and  matronly;  there  was  something  a 
little  doubtful  about  her  eye,  and  I  thought  her  en- 
dowed with  a  temper  that  might  be  very  violent  when 
roused,  though  not  easily  rousable.  Mrs.  Caulfield 
told  me  that  a  Miss  Teman — I  think  that  is  the  name — 
was  the  source  of  the  difficulty  between  Mrs.  Dickens 
and  her  husband.  She  played  in  private  theatricals 
with  Dickens,  and  he  sent  her  a  portrait  in  a  brooch, 
which  met  with  an  accident  requiring  it  to  be  sent  to 
the  jeweler's  to  be  mended.  The  jeweler,  noticing 
Mr.  Dickens's  initials,  sent  it  to  his  house.  Mrs. 
Dickens's  sister,  who  had  always  been  in  love  with 
him  and  was  jealous  of  Miss  Teman,  told  Mrs.  Dickens 
of  the  brooch,  and  she  mounted  her  husband  with 
comb  and  brush.  This,  no  doubt,  was  Mrs.  Dickens's 
version,  in  the  main. 

A  few  evenings  later  I  saw  Miss  Teman  at  the 
Haymarket  Theatre,  playing  with  Buckstone  and  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Charles  Mathews.  She  seemed  rather  a 
small  cause  for  such  a  serious  result — passably  pretty, 
and  not  much  of  an  actress. 

Here  in  one  passage  we  have  an  intimation 
that  Mrs.  Dickens  had  a  temper  that  was  easily 
roused,  that  Dickens  himself  was  interested  in 
an  actress,  and  that  Miss  Hogarth  *'had  al- 
ways been  in  love  with  him,  and  was  jealous 
of  Miss  Teman.'* 

Some  years  before  this  time,  however,  there 
had  been  growing  in  the  mind  of  Dickens  a  cer- 
tain formless  discontent — something  to  which 

IV.— 10 


140    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

he  could  not  give  a  name,  yet  which  cast  over 
him  the  shadow  of  disappointment.  He  ex- 
pressed the  same  feeling  in  David  Copper- 
field,  when  he  spoke  of  David's  life  with  Dora. 
It  seemed  to  come  from  the  fact  that  he  had 
grown  to  be  a  man,  while  his  wife  had  still  re- 
mained a  child. 

A  passage  or  two  may  be  quoted  from  the 
novel,  so  that  we  may  set  them  beside  passages 
in  Dickens's  own  life,  which  we  know  to  have 
referred  to  his  own  wife,  and  not  to  any  such 
nebulous  person  as  Mrs.  Winter. 

The  shadow  I  have  mentioned  that  was  not  to  be 
between  us  any  more,  but  was  to  rest  wholly  on  my 
heart — how  did  that  fall?  The  old  unhappy  feeling 
pervaded  my  life.  It  was  deepened,  if  it  were  changed 
at  all ;  but  it  was  as  undefined  as  ever,  and  addressed 
me  like  a  strain  of  sorrowful  music  faintly  heard  in 
the  night.  I  loved  my  wife  dearly ;  but  the  happiness 
I  had  vaguely  anticipated,  once,  was  not  the  happiness 
I  enjoyed,  and  there  was  always  something  wanting. 

What  I  missed  I  still  regarded  as  something  that 
had  been  a  dream  of  my  youthful  fancy ;  that  was  in- 
capable of  realization;  that  I  was  now  discovering 
to  be  so,  with  some  natural  pain,  as  all  men  did.  But 
that  it  would  have  been  better  for  me  if  my  wife  could 
have  helped  me  more,  and  shared  the  many  thoughts 
in  which  I  had  no  partner,  and  that  this  might  have 
been  I  knew. 

What  I  am  describing  slumbered  and  half  awoke 
and  slept  again  in  the  innermost  recesses  of  my  mind. 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     141 

There  was  no  evidence  of  it  to  me ;  I  knew  of  no  influ- 
ence it  had  in  anything  I  said  or  did,  I  bore  the 
weight  of  all  our  little  cares  and  all  my  projects. 

"There  can  be  no  disparity  in  marriage  like  un- 
suitability  of  mind  and  purpose."  These  words  I 
remembered.  I  had  endeavored  to  adapt  Dora  to 
myself,  and  found  it  impracticable.  It  remained  for 
me  to  adapt  myself  to  Dora ;  to  share  with  her  what 
I  could,  and  be  happy ;  to  bear  on  my  own  shoulders 
what  I  must,  and  be  still  happy. 

Thus  wrote  Dickens  in  his  fictitious  charac- 
ter, and  of  his  fictitious  wife.  Let  us  see  how 
he  wrote  and  how  he  acted  in  his  own  person, 
and  of  his  real  wife. 

As  early  as  1856,  he  showed  a  curious  and 
restless  activity,  as  of  one  who  was  trying  to 
rid  himself  of  unpleasant  thoughts.  Mr.  For- 
ster  says  that  he  began  to  feel  a  strain  upon  his 
invention,  a  certain  disquietude,  and  a  neces- 
sity for  jotting  down  memoranda  in  note-books, 
so  as  to  assist  his  memory  and  his  imagination. 
He  began  to  long  for  solitude.  He  would  take 
long,  aimless  rambles  into  the  country,  return- 
ing at  no  particular  time  or  season.  He  once 
wrote  to  Forster: 

I  have  had  dreadful  thoughts  of  getting  away  some- 
where altogether  by  myself.  If  I  could  have  managed 
it,  I  think  I  might  have  gone  to  the  Pyrenees  for  six 
months.    I  have  visions  of  living  for  half  a  year  or  so 


142    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTOEY 

in  all  sorts  of  inaccessible  places,  and  of  opening  a  new 
book  therein.  A  floating  idea  of  going  up  above  the 
snow-line,  and  living  in  some  astonishing  convent, 
hovers  over  me. 

What  do  these  cryptic  utterances  mean?  At 
first,  both  in  his  novel  and  in  his  letters,  they 
are  obscure;  but  before  long,  in  each,  they 
become  very  definite.  In  1856,  we  find  these 
sentences  among  his  letters : 

The  old  days — the  old  days!  Shall  I  ever,  I  won- 
der, get  the  frame  of  mind  back  as  it  used  to  be 
then?  Something  of  it,  perhaps,  but  never  quite  as 
it  used  to  be. 

I  find  that  the  skeleton  in  my  domestic  closet  is 
becoming  a  pretty  big  one. 

His  next  letter  draws  the  veil  and  shows 
plainly  what  he  means : 

Poor  Catherine  and  I  are  not  made  for  each  other, 
and  there  is  no  help  for  it.  It  is  not  only  that  she 
makes  me  uneasy  and  unhappy,  but  that  I  make  her 
so,  too — and  much  more  so.  We  are  strangely  ill- 
assorted  for  the  bond  that  exists  between  us. 

Then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  she  would  have 
been  a  thousand  times  happier  if  she  had  been 
married  to  another  man.  He  speaks  of  **  in- 
compatibility,** and  a  "difference  of  tempera- 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     143 

ments.'*  In  fact,  it  is  the  same  old  story  with 
which  we  have  become  so  familiar,  and  which 
is  both  as  old  as  the  hills  and  as  new  as  this 
morning's  newspaper. 

Naturally,  also,  things  grow  worse,  rather 
than  better.  Dickens  comes  to  speak  half  jocu- 
larly of  *Hhe  plunge,"  and  calculates  as  to  what 
effect  it  will  have  on  his  public  readings.  He 
kept  back  the  announcement  of  **the  plunge" 
until  after  he  had  given  several  readings ;  then, 
on  April  29,  1858,  Mrs.  Dickens  left  his  home. 
His  eldest  son  went  to  live  with  the  mother,  but 
the  rest  of  the  children  remained  with  their 
father,  while  his  daughter  Mary  nominally  pre- 
sided over  the  house.  In  the  background, 
however,  Georgina  Hogarth,  who  seemed  all 
through  her  life  to  have  cared  for  Dickens  more 
than  for  her  sister,  remained  as  a  sort  of  guide 
and  guardian  for  his  children. 

This  arrangement  was  a  private  matter,  and 
should  not  have  been  brought  to  public  atten- 
tion ;  but  it  was  impossible  to  suppress  all  gos- 
sip about  so  prominent  a  man.  Much  of  the 
gossip  was  exaggerated;  and  when  it  came 
to  the  notice  of  Dickens  it  stung  him  so  se- 
verely as  to  lead  him  into  issuing  a  public  justi- 
fication of  his  course.  He  published  a  statement 


144    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

in  Household  Words,  which  led  to  many  other 
letters  in  other  periodicals,  and  finally  a  long 
one  from  him,  which  was  printed  in  the  New 
York  Tribune,  addressed  to  his  friend  Mr. 
Arthur  Smith. 

Dickens  afterward  declared  that  he  had  writ- 
ten this  letter  as  a  strictly  personal  and  private 
one,  in  order  to  correct  false  rumors  and  scan- 
dals. Mr.  Smith  naturally  thought  that  the 
statement  was  intended  for  publication,  but 
Dickens  always  spoke  of  it  as  'Hhe  violated 
letter." 

By  his  allusions  to  a  difference  of  tempera- 
ment and  to  incompatibility,  Dickens  no  doubt 
meant  that  his  wife  had  ceased  to  be  to  him 
the  same  companion  that  she  had  been  in  days 
gone  by.  As  in  so  many  cases,  she  had  not 
changed,  while  he  had.  He  had  grown  out  of 
the  sphere  in  which  he  had  been  born,  **  asso- 
ciated with  blacking-boys  and  quilt-printers," 
and  had  become  one  of  the  great  men  of  his 
time,  whose  genius  was  universally  admired. 

Mr.  Bigelow  saw  Mrs.  Dickens  as  she  really 
was — a  commonplace  woman  endowed  with  the 
temper  of  a  vixen,  and  disposed  to  outbursts  of 
actual  violence  when  her  jealousy  was  roused. 

It  was  impossible  that  the  two  could  have 


MYSTERY  OF  CHARLES  DICKENS     145 

remained  together,  when  in  intellect  and  sym- 
pathy they  were  so  far  apart.  There  is  nothing 
strange  ahout  their  separation,  except  the  ex- 
ceedingly bad  taste  with  which  Dickens  made 
it  a  public  affair.  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  he 
felt  the  need  of  a  different  mate;  and  that  he 
found  one  is  evident  enough  from  the  hints  and 
bits  of  innuendo  that  are  found  in  the  writings 
of  his  contemporaries. 

He  became  a  pleasure-lover;  but  more  than 
that,  he  needed  one  who  could  understand  his 
moods  and  match  them,  one  who  could  please 
his  tastes,  and  one  who  could  give  him  that  ad- 
miration which  he  felt  to  be  his  due;  for  he 
was  always  anxious  to  be  praised,  and  his  let- 
ters are  full  of  anecdotes  relating  to  his  love  of 
praise. 

One  does  not  wish  to  follow  out  these  clues 
too  closely.  It  is  certain  that  neither  Miss 
Beadnell  as  a  girl  nor  Mrs.  Winter  as  a  matron 
made  any  serious  appeal  to  him.  The  actresses 
who  have  been  often  mentioned  in  connection 
with  his  name  were,  for  the  most  part,  mere 
passing  favorites.  The  woman  who  in  life  was 
Dora  made  him  feel  the  same  incompleteness 
that  he  has  described  in  his  best-known  book. 
The  companion  to  whom  he  clung  in  his  later 


146    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

years  was  neither  a  light-minded  creature 
like  Miss  Beadnell,  nor  an  undeveloped,  high- 
tempered  woman  like  the  one  he  married,  nor  a 
mere  domestic,  friendly  creature  like  Georgina 
Hogarth. 

Ought  we  to  venture  upon  a  quest  which  shall 
solve  this  mystery  in  the  life  of  Charles  Dick- 
ens? In  his  last  will  and  testament,  drawn  up 
and  signed  by  him  about  a  year  before  his 
death,  the  first  paragraph  reads  as  follows : 

I,  Charles  Dickens,  of  Gadshill  Place,  Higham, 
in  the  county  of  Kent,  hereby  revoke  all  my  former 
wills  and  codicils  and  declare  this  to  be  my  last  will 
and  testament.  I  give  the  sum  of  one  thousand 
pounds,  free  of  legacy  duty,  to  Miss  Ellen  Lawless 
Ternan,  late  of  Houghton  Place,  Ampthill  Square,  in 
the  county  of  Middlesex. 

In  connection  with  this,  read  Mr.  John  Bige- 
low's  careless  jottings  made  some  fifteen  years 
before.  Remember  the  Miss  "Teman,"  about 
whose  name  he  was  not  quite  certain;  the  Ho- 
garth sisters '  dislike  of  her ;  and  the  mysterious 
figure  in  the  background  of  the  novelist's  later 
life.  Then  consider  the  first  bequest  in  his  will, 
which  leaves  a  substantial  sum  to  one  who  was 
neither  a  relative  nor  a  subordinate,  but — ^may 
we  assume — ^more  than  an  ordinary  friend? 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  AND 
EVELINA  HANSKA 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  AND  EVELINA 
HANSKA 

I  REMEMBER  once,  when  editing  an  elabo- 
rate work  on  literature,  that  the  publisher 
called  me  into  his  private  office.  After  the  door 
was  closed,  he  spoke  in  tones  of  suppressed 
emotion. 

*'Why  is  it,"  said  he,  ''that  you  have  such  a 
lack  of  proportion?  In  the  selection  you  have 
made  I  find  that  only  two  pages  are  given  to 
George  P.  Morris,  while  you  haven't  given  E. 
P.  Roe  any  space  at  all !  Yet,  look  here — you've 
blocked  out  fifty  pages  for  Balzac,  who  was 
nothing  but  an  immoral  Frenchman!" 

I  adjusted  this  difficulty,  somehow  or  other — 
I  do  not  just  remember  how — and  began  to 
think  that,  after  all,  this  publisher's  view  of 
things  was  probably  that  of  the  English  and 
American  public.  It  is  strange  that  so  many 
biographies  and  so  many  appreciations  of  the 
greatest  novelist  who  ever  lived  should  still 
have  left  him,  in  the  eyes  of  the  reading  public, 
little  more  than  **an  immoral  Frenchman." 

149 


150    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

"In  Balzac,"  said  Taine,  ''there  was  a 
money-broker,  an  archeologist,  an  architect,  an 
upholsterer,  a  tailor,  an  old-clothes  dealer,  a 
journeyman  apprentice,  a  physician,  and  a 
notary."  Balzac  was  also  a  mystic,  a  super- 
naturalist,  and,  above  all,  a  consummate  artist. 
No  one  who  is  all  these  things  in  high  measure, 
and  who  has  raised  himself  by  his  genius  above 
his  countrymen,  deserves  the  censure  of  my 
former  publisher. 

Still  less  is  Balzac  to  be  dismissed  as  ''im- 
moral," for  his  life  was  one  of  singular  self- 
sacrifice  in  spite  of  much  temptation.  His  face 
was  strongly  sensual,  his  look  and  bearing  de- 
noted almost  savage  power;  he  led  a  free  life 
in  a  country  which  allowed  much  freedom ;  and 
yet  his  story  is  almost  mystic  in  its  fineness  of 
thought,  and  in  its  detachment,  which  was  often 
that  of  another  world. 

Balzac  was  born  in  1799,  at  Tours,  with  all 
the  traits  of  the  people  of  his  native  province 
— fond  of  eating  and  drinking,  and  with  plenty 
of  humor.  His  father  was  fairly  well  off.  Of 
four  children,  our  Balzac  was  the  eldest.  The 
third  was  his  sister  Laure,  who  throughout  his 
life  was  the  most  intimate  friend  he  had,  and 
to  whom  we  owe  his  rescue  from  much  scandal- 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  151 

ous  and  (untrue  gossip.  From  her  we  learn  that 
their  father  was  a  combination  of  Montaigne, 
Kabelais,  and  ** Uncle  Toby." 

Young  Balzac  went  to  a  clerical  school  at 
seven,  and  stayed  there  for  seven  years.  Then 
he  was  brought  home,  apparently  much  pros- 
trated, although  the  good  fathers  could  find 
nothing  physically  amiss  with  him,  and  noth- 
ing in  his  studies  to  account  for  his  agitation. 
No  one  ever  did  discover  just  what  was  the  mat- 
ter, for  he  seemed  well  enough  in  the  next  few 
years,  basking  on  the  riverside,  watching  the 
activities  of  his  native  town,  and  thoroughly 
studying  the  rustic  types  that  he  was  after- 
ward to  make  familiar  to  the  world.  In  fact, 
in  Louis  Lambert  he  has  set  before  us  a  pic- 
ture of  his  own  boyish  life,  very  much  as 
Dickens  did  of  his  in  David  Copperfield. 

For  some  reason,  when  these  years  were  over, 
the  boy  began  to  have  what  is  so  often  known 
as  "a  call" — a  sort  of  instinct  that  he  was  to 
attain  renown.  Unfortunately  it  happened  that 
about  this  time  (1814)  he  and  his  parents  re- 
moved to  Paris,  which  was  his  home  by  choice, 
until  his  death  in  1850.  He  studied  here  under 
famous  teachers,  and  gave  three  years  to  the 
pursuit  of  law,  of  which  he  was  very  fond  as 


152    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

literary  material,  though  he  refused  to  prac- 
tise. 

This  was  the  more  grievous,  since  a  great 
part  of  the  family  property  had  been  lost.  The 
Balzacs  were  afflicted  by  actual  poverty,  and 
Honore  endeavored,  with  his  pen,  to  beat  the 
wolf  back  from  the  door.  He  earned  a  little 
money  with  pamphlets  and  occasional  stories, 
but  his  thirst  for  fame  was  far  from  satisfied. 
He  was  sure  that  he  was  called  to  literature, 
and  yet  he  was  not  sure  that  he  had  the  power 
to  succeed.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  his  sister, 
he  wrote : 

I  am  young  and  hungry,  and  there  is  nothing  on 
my  plate.  Oh,  Laure,  Laure,  my  two  boundless  de- 
sires, my  only  ones — to  be  famous,  and  to  be  loved — 
will  they  ever  be  satisfied? 

For  the  next  ten  years  he  was  learning  his 
trade,  and  the  artistic  use  of  the  fiction  writer's 
tools.  What  is  more  to  the  point,  is  the  fact 
that  he  began  to  dream  of  a  series  of  great 
novels,  which  should  give  a  true  and  panoramic 
picture  of  the  whole  of  human  life.  This  was 
the  first  intimation  of  his  "Human  Comedy,'' 
which  was  so  daringly  undertaken  and  so  nearly 
completed  in  his  after  years.  In  his  early  days 
of  obscurity,  he  said  to  his  readers: 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  153 

Note  well  the  characters  that  I  introduce,  since  you 
will  have  to  follow  their  fortunes  through  thirty 
novels  that  are  to  come. 

Here  we  see  how  little  he  had  been  daunted 
by  ill  success,  and  how  his  prodigious  imagina- 
tion had  not  been  overcome  by  sorrow  and  evil 
fortune.  Meantime,  writing  almost  savagely, 
and  with  a  feeling  combined  of  ambition  and 
despair,  he  had  begun,  very  slowly  indeed,  to 
create  a  public.  These  ten  years,  however,  had 
loaded  him  with  debts ;  and  his  struggle  to  keep 
himself  afloat  only  plunged  him  deeper  in  the 
mire.  His  thirty  unsigned  novels  began  to  pay 
him  a  few  hundred  francs,  not  in  cash,  but  in 
promissory  notes;  so  that  he  had  to  go  still 
deeper  into  debt. 

In  1827  he  was  toiling  on  his  first  successful 
novel,  and  indeed  one  of  the  best  historic  novels 
in  French  literature — The  Chouans.  He  speaks 
of  his  labor  as  **done  with  a  tired  brain 
and  an  anxious  mind,'*  and  of  the  eight  or  ten 
business  letters  that  he  had  to  write  each  day 
before  he  could  begin  his  literary  work. 

"Postage  and  an  omnibus  are  extravagances 
that  I  cannot  allow  myself,"  he  writes.  **I 
stay  at  home  so  as  not  to  wear  out  my  clothes. 
Is  that  clear  to  you!" 


154    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

At  the  end  of  the  next  year,  though  he  was 
already  popular  as  a  novelist,  and  much  sought 
out  by  people  of  distinction,  he  was  at  the  very 
climax  of  his  poverty.  He  had  written  thirty- 
five  books,  and  was  in  debt  to  the  amount  of 
a  hundred  and  twenty-four  thousand  francs. 
He  was  saved  from  bankruptcy  only  by  the  aid 
of  Mme.  de  Berny,  a  woman  of  high  character, 
and  one  whose  moral  influence  was  very  strong 
with  Balzac  until  her  early  death. 

The  relation  between  these  two  has  a  sweet- 
ness and  a  purity  which  are  seldom  found.  Mme. 
de  Berny  gave  Balzac  money  as  she  would  have 
given  it  to  a  son,  and  thereby  she  saved  a  great 
soul  for  literature.  But  there  was  no  sickly 
sentiment  between  them,  and  Balzac  regarded 
her  with  a  noble  love  which  he  has  expressed 
in  the  character  of  Mme.  Firmiani. 

It  was  immediately  after  she  had  lightened  his 
burdens  that  the  real  Balzac  comes  before  us  in 
certain  stories  which  have  no  equal,  and  which 
are  among  the  most  famous  that  he  ever  wrote. 
What  could  be  more  wonderful  than  his  El 
Verdugo,  which  gives  us  a  brief  horror  while 
compelling  our  admiration?  What,  outside  of 
Balzac  himself,  could  be  more  terrible  than 
Gobseck,  a   frightful   study  of  avarice,   con- 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  155 

taming  a  deathbed  scene  which  surpasses  in 
dreadfubiess  almost  anything  in  literature? 
Add  to  these  A  Passion  in  the  Desert,  The 
Girl  with  the  Golden  Eyes,  The  Droll  Stories, 
The  Red  Inn,  and  The  Magic  Skin,  and  you 
have  a  cluster  of  masterpieces  not  to  be  sur- 
passed. 

In  the  year  1829,  when  he  was  just  beginning 
to  attain  a  slight  success,  Balzac  received  a  long 
letter  written  in  a  woman's  hand.  As  he  read 
it,  there  came  to  him  something  very  like  an  in- 
spiration, so  full  of  understanding  were  the 
written  words,  so  full  of  appreciation  and  of 
sympathy  with  the  best  that  he  had  done.  This 
anonymous  note  pointed  out  here  and  there  such 
defects  as  are  apt  to  become  chronic  with  a 
young  author.  Balzac  was  greatly  stirred  by 
its  keen  and  sympathetic  criticism.  No  one  be- 
fore had  read  his  soul  so  clearly.  No  one — not 
even  his  devoted  sister,  Laure  de  Surville — had 
judged  his  work  so  wisely,  had  come  so  closely 
to  his  deepest  feeling. 

He  read  the  letter  over  and  over,  and  pres- 
ently another  came,  full  of  critical  apprecia- 
tion, and  of  wholesome,  tonic,  frank,  friendly 
words  of  cheer.  It  was  very  largely  the  effect 
of    these    letters    that    roused    Balzac's    full 

IV.— 11 


156    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

powers  and  made  him  sure  of  winning  the  two 
great  objects  of  his  first  ambition — love  and 
fame — the  ideals  of  the  chivalrous,  romantic 
Frenchman  from  Caesar's  time  down  to  the 
present  day. 

Other  letters  followed,  and  after  a  while 
their  authorship  was  made  known  to  Balzac. 
He  learned  that  they  had  been  written  by  a 
young  Polish  lady,  Mme.  Evelina  Hanska,  the 
wife  of  a  Polish  count,  whose  health  was  feeble, 
and  who  spent  much  time  in  Switzerland  be- 
cause the  climate  there  agreed  with  him. 

He  met  her  first  at  Neuchatel,  and  found  her 
all  that  he  had  imagined.  It  is  said  that  she 
had  no  sooner  raised  her  face,  and  looked  him 
fully  in  the  eyes,  than  she  fell  fainting  to  the 
floor,  overcome  by  her  emotion.  Balzac  himself 
was  deeply  moved.  From  that  day  until  their 
final  meeting  he  wrote  to  her  daily. 

The  woman  who  had  become  his  second  soul 
was  not  beautiful.  Nevertheless,  her  face  was 
intensely  spiritual,  and  there  was  a  mystic  qual- 
ity about  it  which  made  a  strong  appeal  to  Bal- 
zac's innermost  nature.  Those  who  saw  him 
in  Paris  knocking  about  the  streets  at  night 
with  his  boon  companions,  hobnobbing  with  the 
elder  Dumas,  or  rejecting  the  frank  advances  of 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  157 

George  Sand,  would  never  have  dreamed  of  this 
mysticism. 

Balzac  was  heavy  and  broad  of  figure.  His 
face  was  suggestive  only  of  what  was  sensuous 
and  sensual.  At  the  same  time,  those  few  who 
looked  into  his  heart  and  mind  found  there 
many  a  sign  of  the  fine  inner  strain  which  puri- 
fied the  grosser  elements  of  his  nature.  He 
who  wrote  the  roaring  Rabelaisian  Contes 
Drolatiques  was  likewise  the  author  of  Sera- 
phita. 

This  mysticism  showed  itself  in  many  things 
that  Balzac  did.  One  little  incident  will  per- 
haps be  sufficiently  characteristic  of  many 
others.  He  had  a  belief  that  names  had  a  sort 
of  esoteric  appropriateness.  So,  in  selecting 
them  for  his  novels,  he  gathered  them  with 
infinite  pains  from  many  sources,  and  then 
weighed  them  anxiously  in  the  balance.  A 
writer  on  the  subject  of  names  and  their  signifi- 
cance has  given  the  following  account  of  this 
trait : 

The  ^eat  novelist  once  spent  an  entire  day  tramp- 
ing about  in  the  remotest  quarters  of  Paris  in  search 
of  a  fitting  name  for  a  character  just  conceived  by 
him.  Every  sign-board,  every  door-plate,  every  af- 
fiche  upon  the  walls,  was  scrutinized.  Thousands  of 
names  were  considered  and  rejected,  and  it  was  only 


158    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

after  his  companion,  utterly  worn  out  by  fatigue,  had 
flatly  refused  to  drag  his  weary  limbs  through  more 
than  one  additional  street,  that  Balzac  suddenly  saw 
upon  a  sign  the  name  **Marcas,"  and  gave  a  shout  of 
joy  at  having  finally  secured  what  he  was  seeking. 

Marcas  it  was,  from  that  moment;  and  Balzac 
gradually  evolved  a  Christian  name  for  him.  First 
he  considered  what  initial  was  most  appropriate ;  and 
then,  having  decided  upon  Z,  he  went  on  to  expand 
this  into  Zepherin,  explaining  minutely  just  why  the 
whole  name  Zepherin  Marcas,  was  the  only  possible 
one  for  the  character  in  the  novel. 

In  many  ways  Balzac  and  Evelina  Hanska 
were  mated  by  nature.  Whether  they  were  fully 
mated  the  facts  of  their  lives  must  demonstrate. 
For  the  present,  the  novelist  plunged  into  a 
whirl  of  literary  labor,  toiling  as  few  ever  toiled 
— constructing  several  novels  at  the  same  time, 
visiting  all  the  haunts  of  the  French  capital,  so 
that  he  might  observe  and  understand  every 
type  of  human  being,  and  then  hurling  himself 
like  a  giant  at  his  work. 

He  had  a  curious  practise  of  reading  proofs. 
These  would  come  to  him  in  enormous  sheets, 
printed  on  special  paper,  and  with  wide  mar- 
gins for  his  corrections.  An  immense  table 
stood  in  the  midst  of  his  study,  and  upon  the 
top  he  would  spread  out  the  proofs  as  if  they 
were  vast  maps.    Then,  removing  most  of  his 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  159 

outer  garments,  he  would  lie,  face  down,  upon 
the  proof-sheets,  with  a  gigantic  pencil,  such  as 
Bismarck  subsequently  used  to  wield.  Thus  dis- 
posed, he  would  go  over  the  proofs. 

Hardly  anything  that  he  had  written  seemed 
to  suit  him  when  he  saw  it  in  print.  He  changed 
and  kept  changing,  obliterating  what  he  dis- 
liked, writing  in  new  sentences,  revising  others, 
and  adding  whole  pages  in  the  margins,  until 
perhaps  he  had  practically  made  a  new  book. 
This  process  was  repeated  several  times;  and 
how  expensive  it  was  may  be  judged  from  the 
fact  that  his  bill  for  ** author's  proof  correc- 
tions" was  sometimes  more  than  the  publishers 
had  agreed  to  pay  him  for  the  completed 
volume. 

Sometimes,  again,  he  would  begin  writing  in 
the  afternoon,  and  continue  until  dawn.  Then, 
weary,  aching  in  every  bone,  and  with  throb- 
bing head,  he  would  rise  and  tarn  to  fall  upon 
his  couch  after  his  eighteen  hours  of  steady 
toil.  But  the  memory  of  Evelina  Hanska  al- 
ways came  to  him;  and  with  half -numbed  fin- 
gers he  would  seize  his  pen,  and  forget  his 
weariness  in  the  pleasure  of  writing  to  the  dark- 
eyed  woman  who  drew  him  to  her  like  a 
magnet. 


160    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

These  are  very  curious  letters  that  Balzac 
wrote  to  Mme.  Hanska.  He  literally  told  her 
everything  about  himself.  Not  only  were  there 
long  passages  instinct  with  tenderness,  and  with 
his  love  for  her;  but  he  also  gave  her  the 
most  minute  account  of  everything  that  oc- 
curred, and  that  might  interest  her.  Thus  he 
detailed  at  length  his  mode  of  living,  the  clothes 
he  wore,  the  people  whom  he  met,  his  trouble 
with  his  creditors,  the  accounts  of  his  income 
and  outgo.  One  might  think  that  this  was  ego- 
tism on  his  part ;  but  it  was  more  than  that.  It 
was  a  strong  belief  that  everything  which  con- 
cerned him  must  concern  her;  and  he  begged 
her  in  turn  to  write  as  freely  and  as  fully. 

Mme.  Hanska  was  not  the  only  woman  who 
became  his  friend  and  comrade,  and  to  whom 
he  often  wrote.  He  made  many  acquaintances 
in  the  fashionable  world  through  the  good  of- 
fices of  the  Duchesse  de  Castries.  By  her  favor, 
he  studied  with  his  microscopic  gaze  the  heau 
monde  of  Louis  Philippe's  rather  unimpressive 
court. 

In  a  dozen  books  he  scourged  the  court  of  the 
citizen  king — ^its  pretensions,  its  commonness, 
and  its  assemblage  of  nouveaux  riches.  Yet  in 
it  he  found  many  friends — ^Victor  Hugo,  the 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  161 

Girardins — and  among  them  women  who  were 
of  the  world.  George  Sand  he  knew  very  well, 
and  she  made  ardent  love  to  him;  but  he 
laughed  her  off  very  much  as  the  elder  Dumas 
did. 

Then  there  was  the  pretty,  dainty  Mme.  Car- 
raud,  who  read  and  revised  his  manuscripts, 
and  who  perhaps  took  a  more  intimate  interest 
in  him  than  did  the  other  ladies  whom  he  came 
to  know  so  well.  Besides  Mme.  Hanska,  he  had 
another  correspondent  who  signed  herself 
** Louise,"  but  who  never  let  him  know  her 
name,  though  she  wrote  him  many  piquant, 
sunny  letters,  which  he  so  sadly  needed. 

For  though  Honore  de  Balzac  was  now  one  of 
the  most  famous  writers  of  his  time,  his  home 
was  still  a  den  of  suffering.  His  debts  kept 
pressing  on  him,  loading  him  down,  and  almost 
quenching  hope.  He  acted  toward  his  creditors 
like  a  man  of  honor,  and  his  physical  strength 
was  still  that  of  a  giant.  To  Mme.  Carraud  he 
once  wrote  the  half  pathetic,  half  humorous 
plaint : 

Poor  pen!  It  must  be  diamond,  not  because  one 
would  wish  to  wear  it,  but  because  it  has  had  so  much 
use! 

And  again : 


162    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTOKY 

Here  I  am,  owing  a  hundred  thousand  francs.  And 
I  am  forty! 

Balzac  and  Mme.  Hanska  met  many  times 
after  that  first  eventful  episode  at  Neuehatel. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  he  gave  utterance  to 
the  poignant  cry: 

Love  for  me  is  life,  and  to-day  I  feel  it  more  than 
€ver! 

In  like  manner  he  wrote,  on  leaving  her,  that 
famous  epigram: 

It  is  only  the  last  love  of  a  woman  that  can  satisfy 
the  first  love  of  a  man. 

In  1842  Mme.  Hanska 's  husband  died.  Bal- 
zac naturally  expected  that  an  immediate  mar- 
riage with  the  countess  would  take  place;  but 
the  woman  who  had  loved  him  mystically  for 
twelve  years,  and  with  a  touch  of  the  physical 
for  nine,  suddenly  draws  back.  She  will  not 
promise  anything.  She  talks  of  delays,  owing 
to  the  legal  arrangements  for  her  children.  She 
seems  almost  a  prude.  An  American  critic  has 
contrasted  her  attitude  with  his : 

Every  one  knows  how  utterly  and  absolutely  Balzac 
devoted  to  this  one  woman  all  his  genius,  his  aspira- 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  163 

tion,  the  thought  of  his  every  moment ;  how  every  day, 
after  he  had  labored  like  a  slave  for  eighteen  hours,  he 
would  take  his  pen  and  pour  out  to  her  the  most  in- 
timate details  of  his  daily  life;  how  at  her  call  he 
would  leave  everything  and  rush  across  the  continent 
to  Poland  or  to  Italy,  being  radiantly  happy  if  he 
could  but  see  her  face  and  be  for  a  few  days  by  her 
side.  The  very  thought  of  meeting  her  thrilled  him  to 
the  very  depths  of  his  nature,  and  made  him,  for 
weeks  and  even  months  beforehand,  restless,  uneasy, 
and  agitated,  with  an  almost  painful  happiness. 

It  is  the  most  startling  proof  of  his  immense  vital- 
ity, both  physical  and  mental,  that  so  tremendous  an 
emotional  strain  could  be  endured  by  him  for  years 
without  exhausting  his  fecundity  or  blighting  his 
creativeness. 

With  Balzac,  however,  it  was  the  period  of  his 
most  brilliant  work ;  and  this  was  true  in  spite  of  the 
anguish  of  long  separations,  and  the  complaints  ex- 
cited by  what  appears  to  be  caprice  or  boldness  or 
a  faint  indifference.  Even  in  Balzac  one  notices 
toward  the  last  a  certain  sense  of  strain  underlying 
what  he  wrote,  a  certain  lack  of  elasticity  and 
facility,  if  of  nothing  more;  yet  on  the  whole  it  is 
likely  that  without  this  friendship  Balzac  would  have 
been  less  great  than  he  actually  became,  as  it  is  cer- 
tain that  had  it  been  broken  off  he  would  have  ceased 
to  write  or  to  care  for  anything  whatever  in  the  world. 

And  yet,  when  they  were  free  to  marry,  Mme. 
Hanska  shrank  away.  Not  until  1846,  four 
years  after  her  husband's  death,  did  she  finally 
give  her  promise  to  the  eager  Balzac.  Then,  in 
the   overflow   of   his   happiness,   his   creative 


164    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

genius  blazed  up  into  a  most  wonderful  flame ; 
but  he  soon  discovered  that  the  promise  was 
'  not  to  be  at  once  fulfilled.  The  shock  impaired 
that  marvelous  vitality  which  had  carried  him 
through  debt,  and  want,  and  endless  labor. 

It  was  at  this  moment,  by  the  irony  of  fate, 
that  his  country  hailed  him  as  one  of  the  great- 
est of  its  men  of  genius.  A  golden  stream 
poured  into  his  lap.  His  debts  were  not  all 
extinguished,  but  his  income  was  so  large  that 
they  burdened  him  no  longer. 

But  his  one  long  dream  was  the  only  thing  for 
which  he  cared ;  and  though  in  an  exoteric  sense 
this  dream  came  true,  its  truth  was  but  a  mock- 
ery. Evelina  Hanska  summoned  him  to  Poland, 
and  Balzac  went  to  her  at  once.  There  was 
another  long  delay,  and  for  more  than  a  year 
he  lived  as  a  guest  in  the  countess's  mansion  at 
Wierzchownia ;  but  finally,  in  March,  1850,  the 
two  were  married.  A  few  weeks  later  they 
came  back  to  France  together,  and  occupied  the 
little  country  house,  Les  Jardies,  in  which, 
some  decades  later,  occurred  Gambetta's  mys- 
terious death. 

What  is  the  secret  of  this  strange  love,  which 
in  the  womnn  seems  to  be  not  precisely  love, 
but  something  else?    Balzac  was  always  eager 


HONORE  DE  BALZAC  165 

for  her  presence.  She,  on  the  other  hand,  seems 
to  have  been  mentally  more  at  ease  when  he 
was  absent.  Perhaps  the  explanation,  if  we 
may  venture  upon  one,  is  based  upon  a  well- 
known  physiological  fact. 

Love  in  its  completeness  is  made  up  of  two 
great  elements — first,  the  element  that  is  wholly 
spiritual,  that  is  capable  of  sympathy,  and  ten- 
derness, and  deep  emotion.  The  other  element 
is  the  physical,  the  source  of  passion,  of  crea- 
tive energy,  and  of  the  truly  virile  qualities, 
whether  it  be  in  man  or  woman.  Now,  let 
either  of  these  elements  be  lacking,  and  love 
itself  cannot  fully  and  utterly  exist.  The  spir- 
itual nature  in  one  may  find  its  mate  in  the 
spiritual  nature  of  another;  and  the  physical 
nature  of  one  may  find  its  mate  in  the  physical 
nature  of  another.  But  into  unions  such  as 
these,  love  does  not  enter  in  its  completeness. 
If  there  is  any  element  lacking  in  either  of 
those  who  think  that  they  can  mate,  their  mat- 
ing will  be  a  sad  and  pitiful  failure. 

It  is  evident  enough  that  Mme.  Hanska  was 
almost  wholly  spiritual,  and  her  long  years  of 
waiting  had  made  her  understand  the  difference 
between  Balzac  and  herself.  Therefore,  she 
shrank  from  his  proximity,  and  from  his  phys- 


166    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

ical  contact,  and  it  was  perhaps  better  for  them 
both  that  their  union  was  so  quickly  broken  off 
by  death;  for  the  great  novelist  died  of  heart 
disease  only  five  months  after  the  marriage. 

If  we  wish  to  understand  the  mystery  of  Bal- 
zac's life — or,  more  truly,  the  mystery  of  the 
life  of  the  woman  whom  he  married — ^take  up 
and  read  once  more  the  pages  of  Seraphita, 
one  of  his  poorest  novels  and  yet  a  singularly 
illuminating  story,  shedding  light  upon  a  secret 
of  the  soul. 


CHARLES  READE  AND  LAURA 
SEYMOUR 


CHAELES  READE  AND  LAURA 
SEYMOUR 

THE  instances  of  distinguished  men,  or  of 
notable  women,  who  have  broken  through 
convention  in  order  to  find  a  fitting  mate,  are 
very  numerous.  A  few  of  these  instances  may, 
perhaps,  represent  what  is  usually  called  a 
Platonic  union.  But  the  evidence  is  always 
doubtful.  The  world  is  not  possessed  of  abun- 
dant charity,  nor  does  human  experience  lead 
one  to  believe  that  intimate  relations  between 
a  man  and  a  woman  are  compatible  with  Pla- 
tonic friendship. 

Perhaps  no  case  is  more  puzzling  than  that 
which  is  found  in  the  life-history  of  Charles 
Reade  and  Laura  Seymour. 

Charles  Reade  belongs  to  that  brilliant  group 
of  English  writers  and  artists  which  included 
Dickens,  Bulwer-Lytton,  Wilkie  Collins,  Tom 
Taylor,  George  Eliot,  Swinburne,  Sir  Walter 
Besant,  Maclise,  and  Goldwin  Smith.  In  my 
opinion,  he  ranks  next  to  Dickens  in  originality 
and  power.  His  books  are  little  read  to-day ;  yet 

109 


170    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

he  gave  to  the  English  stage  the  comedy 
** Masks  and  Faces,"  which  is  now  as  much  a 
classic  as  Goldsmith's  **She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer" or  Sheridan's  ** School  for  Scandal." 
His  power  as  a  novelist  was  marvelous.  Who 
can  forget  the  madhouse  episodes  in  Hard 
Cash,  or  the  great  trial  scene  in  Griffith 
Gaunt,  or  that  wonderful  picture,  in  The 
Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  of  Germany  and 
Rome  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages!  Here 
genius  has  touched  the  dead  past  and  made  it 
glow  again  with  an  intense  reality. 

He  was  the  son  of  a  country  gentleman,  the 
lord  of  a  manor  which  had  been  held  by  his 
family  before  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  His  an- 
cestors had  been  noted  for  their  services  in  war- 
fare, in  Parliament,  and  upon  the  bench. 
Reade,  therefore,  was  in  feeling  very  much  of 
an  aristocrat.  Sometimes  he  pushed  his  ances- 
tral pride  to  a  whimsical  excess,  very  much  as 
did  his  own  creation.  Squire  Raby,  in  Put 
Yourself  in  His  Place. 

At  the  same  time  he  might  very  well  have 
been  called  a  Tory  democrat.  His  grandfather 
had  married  the  daughter  of  a  village  black- 
smith, and  Reade  was  quite  as  proud  of  this 
as  he  was  of  the  fact  that  another  ancestor  had 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   171 

been  lord  chief  justice  of  England.  From  the 
sturdy  strain  which  came  to  him  from  the  black- 
smith he,  perhaps,  derived  that  sledge-hammer 
power  with  which  he  wrote  many  of  his  most 
famous  chapters,  and  which  he  used  in  news- 
paper controversies  with  his  critics.  From 
his  legal  ancestors  there  may  have  come  to  him 
the  love  of  litigation,  which  kept  him  often  in 
hot  water.  From  those  who  had  figured  in  the 
life  of  royal  courts,  he  inherited  a  romantic 
nature,  a  love  of  art,  and  a  very  delicate  per- 
ception of  the  niceties  of  cultivated  usage. 
Such  was  Charles  Reade — keen  observer, 
scholar,  Bohemian — a  man  who  could  be  both 
rough  and  tender,  and  whose  boisterous  ways 
never  concealed  his  warm  heart. 

Reade 's  school-days  were  Spartan  in  their 
severity.  A  teacher  with  the  appropriate  name 
of  Slatter  set  him  hard  tasks  and  caned  him 
unmercifully  for  every  shortcoming.  A  weaker 
nature  would  have  been  crushed.  Reade 's  was 
toughened,  and  he  learned  to  resist  pain  and  to 
resent  wrong,  so  that  hatred  of  injustice  has 
been  called  his  dominating  trait. 

In  preparing  himself  for  college  he  was 
singularly  fortunate  in  his  tutors.  One  of  them 
was  Samuel  Wilberforce,  afterward  Bishop  of 

IV.— 12 


172    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Oxford,  nicknamed,  from  his  suavity  of 
manner,  '* Soapy  Sam";  and  afterward,  when 
Reade  was  studying  law,  his  instructor  was 
Samuel  "VVarren,  the  author  of  that  once  famous 
novel,  Ten  Thousand  a  Year,  and  the  creator 
of  "  Tittlebat  Titmouse." 

For  his  college  at  Oxford,  Reade  selected  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  and  ancient — Magdalen — 
which  he  entered,  securing  what  is  known  as  a 
demyship.  Reade  won  his  demyship  by  an  ex- 
traordinary accident.  Always  an  original 
youth,  his  reading  was  varied  and  valuable ;  but 
in  his  studies  he  had  never  tried  to  be  minutely 
accurate  in  small  matters.  At  that  time  every 
candidate  was  supposed  to  be  able  to  repeat,  by 
heart,  the  ** Thirty-Nine  Articles."  Reade  had 
no  taste  for  memorizing;  and  out  of  the  whole 
thirty-nine  he  had  learned  but  three.  His  gen- 
eral examination  was  good,  though  not  bril- 
liant. When  he  came  to  be  questioned  orally, 
the  examiner,  by  a  chance  that  would  not  occur 
once  in  a  million  times,  asked  the  candidate  to 
repeat  these  very  articles.  Reade  rattled  them 
off  with  the  greatest  glibness,  and  produced  so 
favorable  an  impression  that  he  was  let  go  with- 
out any  further  questioning. 

It  must  be  added  that  his  English  essay  was 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   173 

original,  and  this  also  helped  him;  but  had  it 
not  been  for  the  other  great  piece  of  luck  he 
would,  in  Oxford  phrase,  have  been  "completely 
gulfed."  As  it  was,  however,  he  was  placed 
as  highly  as  the  young  men  who  were  afterward 
known  as  Cardinal  Newman  and  Sir  Robert 
Lowe  (Lord  Sherbrooke). 

At  the  age  of  twenty-one,  Reade  obtained  a 
fellowship,  which  entitled  him  to  an  income  so 
long  as  he  remained  unmarried.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  the  significance  of  this  when 
we  look  at  his  subsequent  career.  The  fellow- 
ship at  Magdalen  was  worth,  at  the  outset, 
about  twelve  hundred  dollars  annually,  and  it 
gave  him  possession  of  a  suite  of  rooms  free 
of  any  charge.  He  likewise  secured  a  Vinerian 
fellowship  in  law,  to  which  was  attached  an  in- 
come of  four  hundred  dollars.  As  time  went 
on,  the  value  of  the  first  fellowship  increased 
until  it  was  worth  twenty-five  hundred  dollars. 
Therefore,  as  with  many  Oxford  men  of  his 
time,  Charles  Reade,  who  had  no  other  for- 
tune, was  placed  in  this  position — if  he  re- 
frained from  marrying,  he  had  a  home  and  a 
moderate  income  for  life,  without  any  duties 
whatsoever.  If  he  marHed,  he  must  give  up 
his  income  and  his  comfortable  apartments,  and 


174    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

go  out  into  the  world  and  struggle  for  existence. 

There  was  the  further  temptation  that  the 
possession  of  his  fellowship  did  not  even  neces- 
sitate his  living  at  Oxford.  He  might  spend 
his  time  in  London,  or  even  outside  of  England, 
knowing  that  his  chambers  at  Magdalen  were 
kept  in  order  for  him,  as  a  resting-place  to 
which  he  might  return  whenever  he  chose. 

Reade  remained  a  while  at  Oxford,  study- 
ing books  and  men — especially  the  latter.  He 
was  a  great  favorite  with  the  undergraduates, 
though  less  so  with  the  dons.  He  loved  the 
boat-races  on  the  river;  he  was  a  prodigious 
cricket-player,  and  one  of  the  best  bowlers  of 
his  time.  He  utterly  refused  to  put  on  any  of  the 
academic  dignity  which  his  associates  affected. 
He  wore  loud  clothes.  His  flaring  scarfs  were 
viewed  as  being  almost  scandalous,  very  much 
as  Longfellow's  parti-colored  waistcoats  were 
regarded  when  he  first  came  to  Harvard  as  a 
professor. 

Charles  Reade  pushed  originality  to  eccen- 
tricity. He  had  a  passion  for  violins,  and  ran 
himself  into  debt  because  he  bought  so  many 
and  such  good  ones.  Once,  when  visiting  his 
father's  house  at  Ipsden,  he  shocked  the 
punctilious  old  gentleman  by  dancing  on  the 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   175 

dining-table  to  the  accompaniment  of  a  fiddle, 
which  he  scraped  delightedly.  Dancing,  indeed, 
was  another  of  his  diversions,  and,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  fellow  of  Magdalen  and  a 
D.C.L.  of  Oxford,  he  was  always  ready  to  caper 
and  to  display  the  new  steps. 

In  the  course  of  time,  he  went  up  to  London ; 
and  at  once  plunged  into  the  seething  tide  of 
the  metropolis.  He  made  friends  far  and  wide, 
and  in  every  class  and  station — among  authors 
and  politicians,  bishops  and  bargees,  artists  and 
musicians.  Charles  Reade  learned  much  from 
all  of  them,  and  all  of  them  were  fond  of 
him. 

But  it  was  the  theater  that  interested  him 
most.  Nothing  else  seemed  to  him  quite  so  fine 
as  to  be  a  successful  writer  for  the  stage.  He 
viewed  the  drama  with  all  the  reverence  of  an 
ancient  Greek.  On  his  tombstone  he  caused 
himself  to  be  described  as  **  Dramatist,  novelist, 
journalist." 

"Dramatist"  he  put  first  of  all,  even  after 
long  experience  had  shown  him  that  his  great- 
est power  lay  in  writing  novels.  But  in  this 
early  period  he  still  hoped  for  fame  upon  the 
stage. 

It  was  not  a  fortunate  moment  for  dramatic 


176    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

writers.  Plays  were  bought  outright  by  the 
managers,  who  were  afraid  to  risk  any  con- 
siderable sum,  and  were  very  shy  about  risking 
anything  at  all.  The  system  had  not  yet  been 
established  according  to  which  an  author  re- 
ceives a  share  of  the  money  taken  at  the  box- 
office.  Consequently,  Reade  had  little  or  no 
financial  success.  He  adapted  several  pieces 
from  the  French,  for  which  he  was  paid  a  few 
bank-notes.  *  *  Masks  and  Faces ' '  got  a  hearing, 
and  drew  large  audiences,  but  Reade  had  sold 
it  for  a  paltry  sum;  and  he  shared  the  honors 
of  its  authorship  with  Tom  Taylor,  who  was 
then  much  better  known. 

Such  was  the  situation.  Reade  was  person- 
ally liked,  but  his  plays  were  almost  all  rejected. 
He  lived  somewhat  extravagantly  and  ran  into 
debt,  though  not  very  deeply.  He  had  a  play 
entitled  ** Christie  Johnstone,'*  which  he  be- 
lieved to  be  a  great  one,  though  no  manager 
would  venture  to  produce  it.  Reade,  brooding, 
grew  thin  and  melancholy.  Finally,  he  decided 
that  he  would  go  to  a  leading  actress  at  one  of 
the  principal  theaters  and  try  to  interest  her  in 
his  rejected  play.  The  actress  he  had  in  mind 
was  Laura  Seymour,  then  appearing  at  the  Hay- 
market  under  the  management  of  Buckstone; 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   177 

and  this  visit  proved  to  be  the  turning-point  in 
Reade's  whole  life. 

Laura  Seymour  was  the  daughter  of  a  sur- 
geon at  Bath — a  man  in  large  practise  and  with 
a  good  income,  every  penny  of  which  he  spent. 
His  family  lived  in  lavish  style ;  but  one  morn- 
ing, after  he  had  sat  up  all  night  playing  cards, 
his  little  daughter  found  him  in  the  dining- 
room,  stone  dead.  After  his  funeral  it  ap- 
peared that  he  had  left  no  provision  for  his 
family.  A  friend  of  his — a  Jewish  gentleman 
of  Portuguese  extraction — showed  much  kind- 
ness to  the  children,  settling  their  affairs  and 
leaving  them  with  some  money  in  the  bank ;  but, 
of  course,  something  must  be  done. 

The  two  daughters  removed  to  London,  and 
at  a  very  early  age  Laura  had  made  for  herself 
a  place  in  the  dramatic  world,  taking  small 
parts  at  first,  but  rising  so  rapidly  that  in  her 
fifteenth  year  she  was  cast  for  the  part  of  Juliet. 
As  an  actress  she  led  a  life  of  strange  vicissi- 
tudes. At  one  time  she  would  be  pinched  by 
poverty,  and  at  another  time  she  would  be  well 
supplied  with  money,  which  slipped  through  her 
fingers  like  water.  She  was  a  true  Bohemian, 
a  happy-go-lucky  type  of  the  actors  of  her  time. 

From  all  accounts,  she  was  never  very  beau- 


178    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

tiful;  but  she  had  an  instinct  for  strange,  yet 
effective,  costumes,  which  attracted  much  atten- 
tion. She  has  been  described  as  **a  fluttering, 
buoyant,  gorgeous  little  butterfly."  Many 
were  drawn  to  her.  She  was  careless  of  what 
she  did,  and  her  name  was  not  untouched  with 
scandal.  But  she  lived  through  it  all,  and 
emerged  a  clever,  sympathetic  woman  of  wide 
experience,  both  on  the  stage  and  off  it. 

One  of  her  admirers — an  elderly  gentleman 
named  Seymour — came  to  her  one  day  when 
she  was  in  much  need  of  money,  and  told  her 
that  he  had  just  deposited  a  thousand  pounds 
to  her  credit  at  the  bank.  Having  said  this,  he 
left  the  room  precipitately.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning of  a  sort  of  courtship;  and  after  a  while 
she  married  him.  Her  feeling  toward  him  was 
one  of  gratitude.  There  was  no  sentiment 
about  it;  but  she  made  him  a  good  wife,  and 
gave  no  further  cause  for  gossip. 

Such  was  the  woman  whom  Charles  Reade 
now  approached  with  the  request  that  she  would 
let  him  read  to  her  a  portion  of  his  play.  He 
had  seen  her  act,  and  he  honestly  believed  her 
to  be  a  dramatic  genius  of  the  first  order.  Few 
others  shared  this  belief ;  but  she  was  generally 
thought  of  as  a  competent,  though  by  no  means 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   179 

brilliant,  acress.  Reade  admired  her  extremely, 
so  that  at  the  very  thought  of  speaking  with 
her  his  emotions  almost  choked  him. 

In  answer  to  a  note,  she  sent  word  that  he 
might  call  at  her  house.  He  was  at  this  time 
(1849)  in  his  thirty-eighth  year.  The  lady  was 
a  little  older,  and  had  lost  something  of  her 
youthful  charm;  yet,  when  Reade  was  ushered 
into  her  drawing-room,  she  seemed  to  him  the 
most  graceful  and  accomplished  woman  whom 
he  had  ever  met. 

She  took  his  measure,  or  she  thought  she 
took  it,  at  a  glance.  Here  was  one  of  those 
would-be  playwrights  who  live  only  to  torment 
managers  and  actresses.  His  face  was  thin, 
from  which  she  inferred  that  he  was  probably 
half  starved.  His  bashfulness  led  her  to  sup- 
pose that  he  was  an  inexperienced  youth.  Little 
did  she  imagine  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  landed 
proprietor,  a  fellow  of  one  of  Oxford's  noblest 
colleges,  and  one  with  friends  far  higher  in  the 
world  than  herself. 

Though  she  thought  so  little  of  him,  and 
quite  expected  to  be  bored,  she  settled  herself 
in  a  soft  armchair  to  listen.  The  unsuccessful 
playwright  read  to  her  a  scene  or  two  from  his 
still  unfinished  drama.     She  heard  him  pa- 


180    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

tiently,  noting  the  cultivated  accent  of  his  voice, 
which  proved  to  her  that  he  was  at  least  a 
gentleman.    When  he  had  finished,  she  said : 

"Yes,  that's  good!  The  plot  is  excellent.'* 
Then  she  laughed  a  sort  of  stage  laugh,  and 
remarked  lightly :  **  Why  don't  you  turn  it  into 
a  novel!" 

Eeade  was  stung  to  the  quick.  Nothing  that 
she  could  have  said  would  have  hurt  him  more. 
Novels  he  despised;  and  here  was  this  woman, 
the  queen  of  the  English  stage,  as  he  regarded 
her,  laughing  at  his  drama  and  telling  him  to 
make  a  novel  of  it.    He  rose  and  bowed. 

"I  am  trespassing  on  your  time,"  he  said; 
and,  after  barely  touching  the  fingers  of  her 
outstretched  hand,  he  left  the  room  abruptly. 

The  woman  knew  men  very  weU,  though  she 
scarcely  knew  Charles  Reade.  Something  in 
his  melancholy  and  something  in  his  manner 
stirred  her  heart.  It  was  not  a  heart  that  re- 
sponded to  emotions  readily,  but  it  was  a  very 
good-natured  heart.  Her  explanation  of  Reade 's 
appearance  led  her  to  think  that  he  was  very 
poor.  If  she  had  not  much  tact,  she  had  an 
abundant  store  of  sympathy;  and  so  she  sat 
down  and  wrote  a  very  blundering  but  kindly 
letter,  in  which  she  enclosed  a  five-pound  note. 


EEADE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   181 

Reade  subsequently  described  his  feelings  on 
receiving  this  letter  with  its  bank-note.  He 
said: 

*%  who  had  been  vice-president  of  Magda- 
len— I,  who  flattered  myself  I  was  coming  to 
the  fore  as  a  dramatist — to  have  a  five-pound 
note  flung  at  my  head,  like  a  ticket  for  soup  to 
a  pauper,  or  a  bone  to  a  dog,  and  by  an  actress, 
too !  Yet  she  said  my  reading  was  admirable ; 
and,  after  all,  there  is  much  virtue  in  a  five- 
pound  note.  Anyhow,  it  showed  the  writer  had 
a  good  heart." 

The  more  he  thought  of  her  and  of  the  inci- 
dent, the  more  comforted  he  was.    He  called  on 
her  the  next  day  without  making  an  appoint- 
ment; and  when  she  received  him,  he  had  the/ 
five-pound  note  fluttering  in  his  hand. 

She  started  to  speak,  but  he  interrupted  her. 

**No,"  he  said,  "that  is  not  what  I  wanted 
from  you.  I  wanted  sympathy,  and  you  have 
unintentionally  supplied  it." 

Then  this  man,  whom  she  had  regarded  as 
half  starved,  presented  her  with  an  enormous 
bunch  of  hothouse  grapes,  and  the  two  sat  down 
and  ate  them  together,  thus  beginning  a  friend- 
ship which  ended  only  with  Laura  Seymour  *s 
death. 


182    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Oddly  enough,  Mrs.  Seymour's  suggestion 
that  Eeade  should  make  a  story  of  his  play 
was  a  suggestion  which  he  actually  followed. 
It  was  to  her  guidance  and  sympathy  that  the 
world  owes  the  great  novels  which  he  after- 
ward composed.  If  he  succeeded  on  the  stage 
at  all,  it  was  not  merely  in  ''Masks  and 
Faces,"  but  in  his  powerful  dramatization  of 
Zola's  novel,  L'Assommoir,  under  the  title 
"Drink,"  in  which  the  late  Charles  Warner 
thrilled  and  horrified  great  audiences  all  over 
the  English-speaking  world.  Had  Reade  never 
known  Laura  Seymour,  he  might  never  have 
written  so  strong  a  drama. 

The  mystery  of  Reade 's  relations  with  this 
woman  can  never  be  definitely  cleared  up.  Her 
husband,  Mr.  Seymour,  died  not  long  after  she 
and  Reade  became  acquainted.  Then  Reade 
and  several  friends,  both  men  and  women,  took 
a  house  together;  and  Laura  Seymour,  now  a 
clever  manager  and  amiable  hostess,  looked 
after  all  the  practical  affairs  of  the  establish- 
ment. One  by  one,  the  others  fell  away,  through 
death  or  by  removal,  until  at  last  these  two 
were  left  alone.  Then  Reade,  unable  to  give 
up  the  companionship  which  meant  so  much  to 
him,  vowed  that  she  must  still  remain  and  care 


EEADE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   183 

for  him.  He  leased  a  house  in  Sloane  Street, 
which  he  has  himself  described  in  his  novel 
A  Terrible  Temptation.  It  is  the  chapter 
wherein  Reade  also  draws  his  own  portrait  in 
the  character  of  Francis  Rolf e : 


The  room  was  rather  long,  low,  and  nondescript; 
scarlet  flock  paper ;  curtains  and  sofas,  green  Utrecht 
velvet;  woodwork  and  pillars,  white  and  gold;  two 
windows  looking  on  the  street ;  at  the  other  end  fold- 
ing-doors, with  scarcely  any  woodwork,  all  plate  glass, 
but  partly  hidden  by  heavy  curtains  of  the  same  color 
and  material  as  the  others. 

At  last  a  bell  rang;  the  maid  came  in  and  invited 
Lady  Bassett  to  follow  her.  She  opened  the  glass 
folding-doors  and  took  them  into  a  small  conservatory, 
walled  like  a  grotto,  with  ferns  sprouting  out  of 
rocky  fissures,  and  spars  sparkling,  water  dripping. 
Then  she  opened  two  more  glass  folding-doors,  and 
ushered  them  into  an  empty  room,  the  like  of  which 
Lady  Bassett  had  never  seen;  it  was  large  in  itself, 
and  multiplied  tenfold  by  great  mirrors  from  floor  to 
ceiling,  with  no  frames  but  a  narrow  oak  beading; 
opposite  her,  on  entering,  was  a  bay  window,  all  plate 
glass,  the  central  panes  of  which  opened,  like  doors, 
upon  a  pretty  little  garden  that  glowed  with  color, 
and  was  backed  by  fine  trees  belonging  to  the 
nation;  for  this  garden  ran  up  to  the  wall  of  Hyde 
Park. 

The  numerous  and  large  mirrors  all  down  to  the 
ground  laid  hold  of  the  garden  and  the  flowers,  and 
by  double  and  treble  reflection  filled  the  room  with 
delightful  nooks  of  verdure  and  color. 


184    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

Here  are  the  words  in  which  Reade  describes 
himself  as  he  looked  when  between  fifty  and 
sixty  years  of  age : 

He  looked  neither  like  a  poet  nor  a  drudge,  but  a 
great  fat  country  farmer.  He  was  rather  tall,  very 
portly,  smallish  head,  commonplace  features,  mild 
brown  eye  not  very  bright,  short  beard,  and  wore  a 
suit  of  tweed  all  one  color. 

Such  was  the  house  and  such  was  the  man 
over  both  of  which  Laura  Seymour  held  sway 
until  her  death  in  1879.  What  must  be  thought 
of  their  relations  1  She  herself  once  said  to  Mr. 
John  Coleman: 

*'As  for  our  positions — his  and  mine — ^we  are 
partners,  nothing  more.  He  has  his  bank-ac- 
count, and  I  have  mine.  He  is  master  of  his 
fellowship  and  his  rooms  at  Oxford,  and  I  am 
mistress  of  this  house,  but  not  his  mistress !  Oh, 
dear,  no!" 

At  another  time,  long  after  Mr.  Seymour's 
death,  she  said  to  an  intimate  friend : 

"I  hope  Mr.  Reade  will  never  ask  me  to 
marry  him,  for  I  should  certainly  refuse  the 
offer.'' 

There  was  no  reason  why  he  should  not  have 
made  this  offer,  because  his  Oxford  fellowship 
ceased  to  be  important  to  him  after  he  had  won 


READE  AND  LAURA  SEYMOUR   185 

fame  as  a  novelist.  Publishers  paid  him  large 
sums  for  everything  he  wrote.  His  debts  were 
all  paid  off,  and  his  income  was  assured.  Yet 
he  never  spoke  of  marriage,  and  he  always  in- 
troduced his  friend  as  *  *  the  lady  who  keeps  my 
house  for  me." 

As  such,  he  invited  his  friends  to  meet  her, 
and  as  such,  she  even  accompanied  him  to  Ox- 
ford. There  was  no  concealment,  and  appar- 
ently there  was  nothing  to  conceal.  Their  man- 
ner toward  each  other  was  that  of  congenial 
friends.  Mrs.  Seymour,  in  fact,  might  well 
have  been  described  as  "^  good  fellow."  Some- 
times she  referred  to  him  as  *'the  doctor,"  and 
sometimes  by  the  nickname  "Charlie,"  He,  on 
his  side,  often  spoke  of  her  by  her  last  name  as 
"Seymour,"  precisely  as  if  she  had  been  a 
man.  One  of  his  relatives  rather  acutely  re- 
marked about  her  that  she  was  not  a  woman  of 
sentiment  at  all,  but  had  a  genius  for  friend- 
ship; and  that  she  probably  could  not  have 
really  loved  any  man  at  all. 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  explanation  of  their  in- 
timacy. If  so,  it  is  a  very  remarkable  instance 
of  Platonic  friendship.  It  is  certain  that,  after 
she  met  Reade,  Mrs.  Seymour  never  cared  for 
any  other  man.    It  is  no  less  certain  that  he 


186    FAMOUS  AFFINITIES  OF  HISTORY 

never  cared  for  any  other  woman.  When  she 
died,  five  years  before  his  death,  his  life  became 
a  burden  to  him.  It  was  then  that  he  used  to 
speak  of  her  as  *'my  lost  darling"  and  "my 
dove. ' '  He  directed  that  they  should  be  buried 
side  by  side  in  Willesden  churchyard.  Over  the 
monument  which  conmiemorates  them  both,  he 
caused  to  be  inscribed,  in  addition  to  an  epitaph 
for  himself,  the  following  tribute  to  his  friend. 
One  should  read  it  and  accept  the  touching 
words  as  answering  every  question  that  may  be 
asked : 

Here  lies  the  great  heart  of  Laura  Seymour,  a  bril- 
liant artist, 'a  humble  Christian,  a  charitable  woman, 
a  loving  daughter,  sister,  and  friend,  who  lived  for 
others  from  her  childhood.  Tenderly  pitiful  to  all 
God 's  creatures — even  to  some  that  are  frequently  de- 
stroyed or  neglected — she  wiped  away  the  tears  from 
many  faces,  helping  the  poor  with  her  savings  and 
the  sorrowful  with  her  earnest  pity.  "When  the  eye 
saw  her  it  blessed  her,  for  her  face  was  sunshine,  her 
voice  was  melody,  and  her  heart  was  sympathy. 

This  grave  was  made  for  her  and  for  himself  by 
Charles  Reade,  whose  wise  counselor,  loyal  ally,  and 
bosom  friend  she  was  for  twenty-four  years,  and  who 
mourns  her  all  his  days. 


THE    END 


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